


The Wretched Simulacra

by LouRea (MementoVitae)



Series: A Devil Walks the Dragonsphere [4]
Category: Devil May Cry, NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Android Politics, Drama, Found Family, Gen, Science Fiction & Fantasy, The Fic Is About Autonomy, Worldbuilding, Yoko Taro thinks he's real funny-well I'm about to be fucking hilarious
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:08:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 117,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26201650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MementoVitae/pseuds/LouRea
Summary: With only the words of the enigmatic Accord to go on, V and 8E plot to cross to the Night Kingdom to search for the remains of the red dragon. Meanwhile, 9S sets his sights on the moon server to destroy the final protocol and restore 2B and the YoRHa trapped on the remains of the Ark. Both end up discovering that the world has plenty of secrets left to keep.The Machine War is over but the Dragonsphere is only beginning.
Series: A Devil Walks the Dragonsphere [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1440319
Comments: 100
Kudos: 77





	1. ((Hello, world))

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No foreword. Get in, I’m taking us for a ride. 
> 
> Day 325: Mission Start

Normandy was a place of mountains. Mountains of android bodies shredded by artillery and anti-air missiles and baked in the sun for four years. Mountains of machines and machine parts. Mountains of odds and ends and shell casings and fuses and components all mingled into oil-stained dirt. None of it could be cleared away or retrieved after the battle that had dropped most of it there. Machine hold on the area never expanded, but androids never managed to wrest it back from them either. Up until the fall of the Tower, it was the one hot zone to be found in the central H-cluster. A constant reminder for the Horizon Belt that ‘low aggression’ didn’t mean ‘no aggression’.

Place was a scavenger’s paradise now, though.

Fully intact machine bodies with rare parts were just a careless rummage away. Android bodies would be a little deeper down in the dirt. They could be viable, or they could be junk, but even junk was good for melting back down into raw materials when resource scarcity was an ever-present problem. A freely searchable dumpsite like Normandy would have been a major victory for the android side if they’d still had a war to fight.

The fundamental elements of a scavenger city weren’t hard to find. Tarps and long, thin blankets that reeked of resin kept water off sensitive materials. There was a smell of metal shavings and sparks and churned soil in the air. The hiss of blowtorches. Flickers of optic lights. There were plenty of androids to blame for all those signs of inhabitation, but most were just tired shadows in the twilight. They worked without tension or a sense of urgency. Some were meticulous, some were haphazard, and some were barely working at all, but all of them were slow as a bunch of tired ants swarming over a pile of sugar they had no appetite for.

Upside of that was nobody really cared who came or went, including us.

With the map laid flat and weighed against the strong breeze by a stone, I pointed 49 through the area.

“This is where they send all the scavenged stuff into space. Tiny place, aggressively guarded since launching sites are expensive.” I slid my finger left to the furthest landmass on the western coast. “This is where me and V eventually need to get to. The North Atlantic Exchange. Major re-supply location—anything coming or going nautically above the equator will pass through here and that will include voyages into the night kingdom. “

“Assuming they’re still exchanging supplies with the other coast,” murmured 49, with a discouraged glance at the discouraged androids all around them.

“Free world now,” I said with a shrug. “If it’s not on the books, someone might be going off of them. Might be a lot of things happening off record these days, which is what I’m going to look into before we get any closer.”

“When do you think you’ll be back?”

“Aiming for 24 hours, give or take for transit. 48 hours at the outer limit.”

“That’s twice the time!”

“Sure is. Talking to people comes with the territory and that takes time, especially if those people are chatty.”

“I guess… What about this island?” He pointed to the larger, closer landmass directly north of Normandy’s shoreline. “Would it be better for us to cross so we’re as close as possible?”

“Not necessarily. The H-sector island masses are generally operational sites, especially the Exchange. They’re heavily industrialized. I wouldn’t count on fresh water unless you feel like looking for an unpolluted spring, and even assuming you found one, it would probably be claimed as an official resource. Until we’re ready to make our move, it’s better if we stay on the mainland side.”

“Understood. I’ll stay focused on recon and intel gathering in the immediate area.” He crossed his arms and stared at the map with the serious earnestness of a good soldier. “We’re operating without support now, so let’s pre-establish our operational range in case of emergencies. I can’t provide detailed retreat trajectories without in-person analysis, but I might be able to give you a generalized model based on topographical data.”

“That’s alright. I’m accustomed to self-extraction.” I traced a finger over my intended pathway. Couldn’t really predict where I’d need to go, so that would have to do. “The goal is always to not have to leave in a hurry.”

“Still,” he said, tracking his finger around a small circumference well away from the shoreline that corresponded to the nearest junkpile. He could handle way more than that, but I appreciated the caution. “I’d like to do what I can for you. I know this was your job, but there’s a big difference between not using support and not _having_ any.”

He was only half right, but time was wasting. I doubted there was a way to impress on him the difference between going behind enemy lines and going behind friendly ones anyway. Not without just taking him with me, which would have been premature. The androids on this side of the channel were pretty laid back, but anything could be happening on the islands.

I leaned back around a pile of old truck parts to peek at V. He was slouched against a goliath class machine leg jutting up out of the dirt that we’d decided to use as a landmark. Huddled into his travel-worn cloak and doing a whole lot of nothing, he blended in perfectly with all the rest of the androids around here. Hard to tell if he was awake or asleep behind the shades, though.

“Something you need?”

Awake it was. “Nah. Just behave yourself and don’t do anything too human.”

He scoffed, and I rolled up the map with a smile and handed it off to 49. “We’ll rendezvous here.”

“Roger that. Stay safe, Fern.”

Like I had so many times before, I took off with nothing but the clothes on my body, the gun across my back, and my NFCS on stand-by.

49 most likely thought of this as the same kind of scouting mission he would have undertaken. But I wasn’t specialized for reconnaissance or espionage among machines. What I was specialized for, and very good at, was integrating quickly into new groups and procuring local communal intel. There wasn’t an android around during the war who would claim to know what a machine was thinking, but it was my job to know exactly what other androids were thinking before I carried out whatever sentence they received from command based on my reports.

It was a little strange knowing I wasn’t expected to kill anybody this time around.

Rust dominated on the breeze. Normandy’s coast and the waterway between it and the other island were clogged with trash and parts all clanking together as they moved in sluggish currents invisible beneath the detritus. A few smaller androids trotted along the expanse of tide-worn metal fragments that passed for a beach. They were clearly used to it, but every now and again one of them dropped like a rock where there was more water than shore to support their weight. I kept well back, where reliable dirt was all that was beneath my feet.

There was no docking any kind of boat in all that garbage, so I followed other androids I saw heading in approximately the direction I wanted to go up along the coast. There was no reason to watch the time, so I watched them instead. Most were carrying things in crates. Plenty were not. I picked a random member of the former group and followed them at a distance. When they broke off and turned inland to drop off their cargo at some location that wasn’t going my way, I simply picked a different android to follow. Eventually, the herd had thinned to maybe seven, but we arrived at a station that was packed with easily a hundred other androids.

I remembered and expected this kind of density around the operational sites, but this was less than a hundred kilometers away from _Normandy_. A zone so hot that it couldn’t be approached much less entered without assured casualties until only a year ago. How could there be a hundred androids on a single transport platform this close?

I glanced out to sea. The other island was a dark blotch in the dusk. Here the waters were mostly clear, and I caught where the light bouncing on the waves abruptly stopped. Tracks. The platform was a train station for a line that went right across the channel. It made me more nervous than I already was. I’d never had a reason to take the Central H train before, but the way I remembered it, it didn’t connect to the mainland at all. The present quantity of androids at the coast must have been far worse at one point for them to bother building new tracks with the war over.

A horn blared faintly from the other side of the channel, and a lazy but loud voice called out. “The 0700 will be arriving shortly. Capacity restrictions are active. Standard freight will resume after repairs.”

Groans answered without any real energy. It meant most of the cargo-carriers were going to end up waiting until whenever the next train was, but it wasn’t like they didn’t have plenty of time to waste. Since I was empty-handed and had a schedule to stick to, I wormed my way up to the front of the platform.

The android who made the announcement looked at me like I was about as important as a passing fly. “Need something?”

“Not sure,” I said frankly. “Never been on this train before. I’m trying to get to the North Atlantic Exchange?”

“This train goes to sorting yard A.” The sheen of contempt on the robotic recitation was thin, but obvious as a coat of paint. I wondered how many times he’d answered my question since being stationed there. “You’ll have to stay on after sorting yard A to get to the Exchange.”

I’d see my fair share of train cars that were busted, broken down relics. Boarding one was interesting, but not exactly thrilling. Half the windows were missing so the breeze as we crossed was strong, omnipresent, and reeked of salt, oil, and manufacturing chemicals on top of the lingering rust from down shore.

Weight restrictions left the car sparsely populated. Most carried bags instead of boxes. Most were eyeing me and the few other empty-handed androids for _not_ carrying bags. Not suspiciously. More amused. I looked lost to them. So I leaned into ‘looking uncertain’. Crossed my ankles. Tapped my feet and fingers. Looked around a lot. Made hesitant eye contact with a bag holder who was watching me and doing a terrible job of pretending she wasn’t silently laughing at me.

“Hey, uh…” I ventured wiltingly. “What’s everyone carrying?”

“Supplies, of course.”

“Even though the war’s over?”

She puffed up to explain it to me, an obvious greenhorn. The ones who were content enough to laugh without speaking up to help always loved to explain. Usually in great and condescending detail. “There’s still plenty of need for supplies. General resources are no longer a big demand with manufacturing halted, but there are plenty of special requests to fill. I take it you’re a new wander-in?”

“I’m new here if that’s what you mean.”

“Hah. Command chain has been falling apart all over these last few months. Androids are leaving their posts so they can go other places where they still have things to do. Purpose, you know?” She shook her head and adjusted her goggles. “Nobody can report them as AWOL cause that’s not really a thing anymore, so they run off from their assigned sector and wander in here to try and be useful. Even though scavenging isn’t some easy, glamorous job just any old model can do.”

So that was what happened. No wonder we started passing more androids traveling in packs as we got closer to Sector H.

“I guess I’m more of a wander- _through_ ,” I joked with a clumsy smile. “I’m not here to get into scavenging. I’m trying to make my way across the ocean. To the Night Kingdom.”

She gave an ugly caw of a laugh. “Why would you want to go to that place?”

I dropped my eyes to my lap and lowered my voice. “Doesn’t really matter where any of us go anymore, does it…?”

A hint of naked hopelessness that hit too close to home and suddenly I wasn’t fun to talk (down) to anymore. She gave me a nasty look and shifted in her seat to face away from me and that was that. The car was silent for the rest of the trip, and no one spoke to me when the train reached its destination.

The sorting yard was more or less how I remembered seeing it from a distance. Same as all the piles of shit back in Normandy, except with clear evidence of organization, and the androids moving through the stacks weren’t dragging their feet.

“Hey,” someone barked at me from outside. “You have to deboard.”

“…Doesn’t this train go to the North Atlantic Exchange?”

“Yeah, at 1100 after sweep and systems check.” They gestured impatiently through the open doors. “Which we can’t do with passengers.”

According to my internal clock, the time was 0845. I made a note to punch that bastard back on the mainland who neglected to tell me there’d be a two-hour maintenance routine in between actual transit. I also made a note as I stood on the platform and watched the line of dull silver cars sluggishly lock into position that said the routine was probably bullshit. 

Sector H had always been tight. They had working tech and they valued it and it showed in the way they ran their affairs. It was easy to get in a lot of trouble by breaking things or failing to follow upkeep protocols around here, and corrosives of any kind were a controlled substance. But two hours maintenance after just returning from the mainland? For a train? They were looking for something, and whatever it was, they were worried about it. Maybe it had something to do with the capacity limitations and freight suspension.

Might be nothing, might be important, but presently didn’t have any obvious repercussions for me, V, or 49’s plans, so I marked that intel medium priority and trotted off the platform. I could pass that along to the scanner when I got back and let him puzzle it out.

Outside the sorting yard, the landscape was normal. _Human_ normal, the way I’d only read about in old books. Trucks and buses passed by on smoothly paved roads and the buildings didn’t look like they’d been reduced to dust and rebuilt a hundred times in the last thousand years. Things weren’t new, exactly. The only new things that got made in this world were weapons and androids. I wouldn’t even have called it modern given my experience with the cutting-edge environment of the Bunker. Jarringly well-maintained antiquity, maybe. In the patchwork remains of memories I had wiped and wiped and wiped again without ever having the guts to do it right, I recalled everything else about the island being just as dreary as it was now. Always cloudy and weirdly damp even though it rarely rained. Intact roofing and dozens of little corners and covered stalls that had nothing to do with human architecture were everywhere. To guard against those rare rains, which were all but guaranteed to be acidic.

What wasn’t the same was the population. Androids milled around in numbers that made me feel almost claustrophobic. The group at the Normandy platform was nothing compared to the bustle of activity and the unmissable increase in ambient temperature that could only have been sustained by hundreds, maybe even thousands of androids congregating in a small area. I wasted my time away listening to them for information, but most of their conversations were passing and trivial.

A _lot_ of complaining about the Army of Humanity.

Enough to note, not enough for me to put any priority on. If there was anything that made more sense than the dense but invisible fog of hopelessness hovering over the island, it’d be a current of rage at all the unearthed lies told to them by the command chain.

“The 1100 will be departing shortly,” a voice boomed from back at the platform. “Capacity restrictions are active.”

“Alright,” I muttered. “Let’s try this again…”

By the time I arrived at the dock of the Exchange, it was 1800 hours and I was in a terrible mood.

The train operators were either compulsive liars or they had given up all ambitions of being helpful in the face of a constant and massive influx of wander-ins who didn’t know how anything worked. Which meant I had the privilege of learning the hard way that the train system had one track and five stops. The first of which was where I’d boarded that morning, and the last of which was at the Exchange, between which were included _two_ of those fun little pitstops for ‘sweep and systems check’.

I had an hour to find out what I needed and get back on that train, or I’d be out here for another twelve goddamn hours waiting to make a trip that was twelve hours long.

That part was refreshingly simple. I accosted the first reasonably competent looking android I saw, explained that I’d been jerked around by the train system for half a day, and said very, _very_ nicely that I would really like to know if there were any trips to the Night Kingdom planned any time in the next quarter. Moved by my politeness, he explained rapidly that the Exchange was currently not operating at all. The influx of wander-ins and coupled with the absence of any need for major supply transport had seen all freight, battle class, and flagships anchored for at least the last six months. Resistance-commanded ships were still sailing, but since the Exchange docks were Army run, very few of them came in and they did so unpredictably. I thanked him, because I was a nice fucking person, and sagged exhaustedly on the nearest wayward anchor.

What a waste of a goddamn day.

A throaty laugh rolled over my head. “Trouble finding work?”

I looked up. An android was leaning over the guardrails on one of the docked ships with a broom slung over their shoulder. I couldn’t make out their features in the dark, but I could tell they were smiling at me.

“Trouble finding lots of things,” I admitted grouchily, letting my frustration show plain.

“You a wander-in?”

“Didn’t come here to be. But it seems like it’ll be a private request instead of a cargo trip if I want to get to the night kingdom, so, yeah, I guess I am.”

“Night kingdom? What’s out there for you but the dark and the cold?”

“I’m just lookin’ for a good place to break down.” I let my gaze fall back toward the sea. Toward the sun dipping but never disappearing into the western horizon. “Me and…a friend.”

“That so…” they murmured, in a voice that bore no judgment one way or the other. “Well, you’re not the first like that. Won’t be the last, either. It’ll take time to get up the kind of funds you’ll need for a voyage like that on a vessel that can actually hack it, but requisitions are open. You scavenge?”

“Yeah, but I’m not really any good at it. I’m handy with repairs, though.”

“You’ll find work anywhere then. Granted it might not pay much. Unless…” They tilted their broom handle back inland. “You handle personnel repairs or industrial?”

“Passing at the fore, but I’m Grade 2 on the latter,” I said proudly.

“Fancy! Hop your train back to sorting yard B and you should be able to get something good going.”

“Isn’t that just the freight processing area for Horizon-1?”

“There should be a general office around there too. They’re always clamoring for competent repair androids, so it should go well if you introduce yourself.”

Now I was getting somewhere. I checked the time just to be sure. Twenty minutes until the train left. More than enough time. And if not, maybe I could come back. They looked so comfortable up there with their broom they had to be permanently stationed around here.

“Is there some kind of shortage? I always heard launch sites were kept really well-staffed.”

“You’d be right. But that was then and there was a war then. These days, a lot of androids, including the ones with important jobs and specialty skills, just up and vanish sometimes.”

“Like being kidnapped or something?”

They gave another one of their bellowing laughs. “Imaginative, aren’t you? Nah, most of them probably just went off lookin’ for ‘a good place to break down’.”

I made a show of curling in on myself and looking embarrassed. “O-oh…”

“Don’t go making long faces. If your friend’s a scavenger they can help you and it might not take you all that long.” They grinned wide. “Maybe they’ll strike it rich and find some YoRHa parts.”

I froze. “…Pardon?”

“YoRHa parts. Apparently a whole lot of ‘em were involved in the Normandy drop. Wiped out to the last, they say. Ever since it became possible to scavenge in the former hot zone, there’s been a special requisition open for them.”

Carefully, I modulated my voice to sound of nothing but gossipy curiosity. “Those parts have been sitting there for years; who’d want to collect them now? The Army?”

“You would think since they were specialty combat types, but no! The HHRMO is the one handing out the payments, and I hear it’s the best pay anyone’s ever been offered. If identification weren’t basically impossible without specialized equipment, I’m sure there’d be plenty of rich androids walking around. Hell, I might like to be one of them!” 

I took a slow, deep breath to keep my auxiliary vents from opening. The goal for an Executioner was to not have to leave in a hurry. I had done my job. Integrated, successfully acquired important social intel and raised no suspicion that I might be any different from the average wander-in. I didn’t _have_ to leave in a hurry; it would only draw attention to myself if I did.

But over the next 12 hours, I made it my business to walk like I had somewhere to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little taste ahead of time because I’m very excited to write the last installment of this fic, and to share it with all of you guys~
> 
> Next chapter will be on the 16th of September, and we’ll be on a once a week schedule until the New Year because I’m stalling for the YoRHa boys novelization in October and maybe/hopefully more from Re[in]carnation and the last FFXIV NieR raid? (Holy shit you guys, that Puppet’s Bunker raid.)
> 
> Regardless, I’ll be moving back to the usual twice a week schedule after the new year break. 
> 
> See you in two weeks >3c


	2. Kernel Panic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 326: Unexpected firefight, unexpected friend.

To the best of 49’s knowledge, the predisposition toward high places wasn’t hardwired into scanner models. It was just the natural conclusion of other traits that were. Heights offered excellent wide-range field visuals, limited access allowing for analysis to proceed undisturbed, and even a degree of stealth. Machines rarely looked up for whatever reason. Their anti-air systems were mercilessly efficient during any mission requiring orbital entry, but on the ground, even the conspicuous black uniform might not draw attention if the android wearing it was too far above their heads.

For example, if they sat on top of a goliath biped-type machine leg conveniently lodged in the ground. He frowned up at it with one foot tapping a restless rhythm. It would have been a great spot to survey the immediate area from.

Too bad climbing it the hard way would probably garner as much if not more attention than jumping it.

Pretending to be a standard model was an ever-growing pile of slight inconveniences just like that. Even without the machine cores powering them, a YoRHa’s default build was drastically different from that of a standard model despite more or less identical exteriors. Blending in on the day-to-day wasn’t a problem. He’d turned off all his automatic compensation functionality and assist systems to limit his more high-end reflexes, but that didn’t help him with the subtle irritation that washed over him every time he had to choose to not do things that were second nature to him. Reducing his base range of motion would have taken it out of his control and solved that problem, but that was the one handicap he refused to place on himself.

Most androids weren’t particularly inquisitive. Millennia of war had left them more cautious than curious and despite having more of the latter trait than he liked, 49 shared their wariness. Operations never went perfectly, not even with all the preparation and foresight and piles of data for support. Getting to the moon wasn’t going to be any different, and he needed to be flexible. Ready to fight. Or more.

Beside him, V stifled a yawn. “Something up there of interest?”

“Not really,” he answered, peering at the pronounced lines under V’s eyes and the heavy way he leaned on his cane. He sounded like himself and he’d fallen asleep easily, but he had that worryingly exhausted look that 49 hadn’t seen in a long time. “Are you okay?”

V pushed his obscuring sunglasses into place. “I’m fine.”

 _It won’t kill you if you say no once in awhile…_ Not that there was much either of them could’ve done if he did. In the same way it was hard for V to fall asleep in the city ruins because the sun was so high, it was probably hard for him to wake up while it was so dark.

Androids had plenty of little unnecessary habits they liked to partake in. Back in Anemone’s camp, there were androids that drank and androids that ate. Individually, they were only quirks—odd, but nothing to take any special note of. V did all of those things and more simultaneously, and by necessity, and none worried 49 more than sleep. Human exhaustion was a different beast to android exhaustion, and V was rarely well-rested even on a good day.

On the bright side, 49 had seen a lot of derelict androids lying around like they were sleeping during his analysis of their immediate surroundings. No one bothered them, so ideally no one would bother V.

“Were you able to learn anything thus far?”

“More than I was expecting, but…” He rested a fist against his chin. “Not anything interesting. Mostly information about the local financial system.”

V gave a short, wry laugh. “Money still makes the world go round, I see.”

What a weird euphemism. The world didn’t go around at all and even when it had, 49 was fairly sure it involved gravity rather than currency.

“Does it?” V stared aside at him like he couldn’t possibly be serious. “It’s never been a big part of my assignments.”

“It didn’t seem to be an object for you when you bought those old-world weapons from Emil.”

“That’s pretty much the only use I’ve ever had for it. Weapons, short-acting performance boosters, nanomachine stimulant, memory expansions, chips… I just got money because I found it or somebody in camp was willing to pay for the stuff I picked up.” He let his arms fall and shrugged. “Half of it must’ve been important R&D supplies, but I also got a lot of money for some of the fish I used to catch. I don’t really have a clear idea of what makes a shark as valuable as useable materials or weapons, though.”

For that matter, he didn’t have a clear idea why money would be so important in this area that it was a basic and expected part of work performed. The resistance mostly provided services or spare materials in exchange for dealing with small, non-critical requests, but that was a courtesy, not a cornerstone. A YoRHa that did not do its job was a waste of resources. Continued existence hinged on a unit’s ability to justify their operating, repair, and body replacement costs. When money entered the equation, it was either a reward or a stipend toward ground-side supplies, never compensation.

“I wonder what kind of things androids use money for now…?”

A snort and a gravelly cackle answered him. From a male-type android, perched on half a dented machine torso next to a pile of assorted small parts. Wires and screws, things like that. He’d spun half way around from where he must have been minding his business until that moment, and was openly smirking. 

49 realized abruptly that to a casual listener, he’d asked an embarrassingly naïve question. “I mean around here,” he blurted defensively. “Now that the war is over.”

The android only shook his head and gave another croaky laugh. “You’re recent, aren’t you. Less than three years out from manufacture?”

Not quite right, but not quite wrong either. “Close enough.”

“Sounds like you were good at what you did, but you should start thinking a little bigger. If you have money, spend it on something you want or something you don’t feel like digging up yourself. Nothin’ to kill but time now. Might as well indulge.”

“Indulge, huh...” It wasn’t that he didn’t get that; he liked to indulge in all types of things, but none had ever cost him any money. Not even the ones he’d picked up after being around V. “Is that really enough? It doesn’t seem like it’s doing much good for morale.”

“If you came for morale, you might as well be looking for lily-pads in the desert,” the older android rumbled in a tone that could have been agreement, reproach, or both. “Morale’s expensive, but distraction is cheap, and seeing how there isn’t a machine-producing factory within two zones of here, you’re not gonna get it from combat. The ones you see working hardest—” He gestured out to the piles with the more active androids. “Want a distraction. So we scavenge like always and if we find a bit of treasure along the way, better for us.”

49 perked up, both at the oddly specific term and the opportunity to escape the bleak turn the conversation was taking. “What treasure?”

The android looked both him and V up and down, poked his tongue at the inside of his cheek, and rummaged under his cloak. After a great deal of fussing, he showed off a slightly damaged chip. “Check it out. It’s a chip from a YoRHa unit.”

A _damaged_ chip from a YoRHa unit, 49 mentally corrected. He looked up slowly. “Okay…why do you have that?”

“Scavenged it, of course. I’m gonna get it fixed and install it.” He leaned to one side to put it back with almost as much inefficient flapping as when he’d pulled it out. “It’s a hell of a thrill, I hear. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll find a hand or a leg or something.”

“Okay, that’s not only against regulations but just a really bad idea.”

“No logic virus, no problem. What’s the worst that could happen? I’d pass this one off to you, but they’re not exactly easy to come by.” He hefted his little pile of other materials and made a thoughtless partial salute. “And I think you’re probably still a few years too young to appreciate it.”

49 watched him go with a tight frown and an unfamiliar squirming sensation in his chest. Like a worm rudely unearthed. He was aware of V watching him, but when their eyes met, both of them found the other passively looking for something that wasn’t there.

V voiced it before he could. “I expected your reaction to be stronger.”

49 let his head sag to one side and sighed. “Not like they took them off anybody alive. It’s wasteful though. And dangerous. They can’t utilize the full capacity of those parts. They’ll just burn themselves out—standard-issue reactors don’t have the same high-energy output as black boxes.”

“Ah. So they’re like hunters.”

“Hunters?”

“Devil hunters,” V specified. “A human is fundamentally no match for even weak demons, yet there are humans who make their business killing devils. To bridge the gap in power, they push their bodies to the limit to master a suitably destructive weapon or use parts of the very demons they kill as enhancements.”

“…You mean enhancements for their weapons right?”

“Or their bodies.” A disdainful sneer cut across his face. “Though mere burnout would be a mercy compared to the fate of those too weak to bear it.”

An itchy prickling spread across the back of 49’s neck. V spoke like he was so above that fate, but anything could have happened when he interacted with the dragon’s bones. Anything could happen when he eventually found the rest of the body. All the records and reports they’d managed to find suggested Emil had been a completely normal kid before he was changed by the exact force V was entangled with now.

White Chlorination had been an extinction event and the demons of V’s world were a constant, predatory threat, but it seemed to 49 that humans were awfully quick to throw away their humanity if it allowed them to escape death.

The thought made him queasy, so he quickly put it out of his mind. “It’s going on 26 hours… I really hope she doesn’t leave us waiting around here all day.”

V didn’t answer. His posture had changed beneath his cloak—gone loose but methodically poised. Heat radiated from his left side. His left arm. He raised only one finger from his cane. 49 took care to look where it gestured just as inconspicuously.

There wasn’t anything to see at first. Same piles of nearly whole machine bodies strewn out where they had haphazardly fallen. Same feeble saplings straining above thick weeds and crumbled infrastructure toward the day’s last light. Same husks of buildings with their empty windows that were somehow more unnerving than the ones back in the city. Maybe because they were all so close to the ground. A few androids drifting along footpaths that were only just beginning to turn to packed, dry dust where even the hardiest grass couldn’t sprout. One pair walked shoulder to shoulder. They didn’t look particularly different, but they weren’t carrying any boxes, bags, or loose components, and they didn’t have that prospecting look the more enterprising scavengers did.

What they did have beneath their cloaks were clothes dotted by shiny magnetite nodes shaped like black diamonds.

“Army of Humanity,” he whispered, willing his body to not tense up. “Don’t think they’ve noticed us.”

“No. However, we are not the only ones who have noticed _them_.”

V was right. The atmosphere had changed. Dozens of pairs of optic lights had appeared high and low, all keenly focused on these new presences among the junk piles.

In a growing daze, 49 observed in some of the scavenger androids descend from their perches, loud and unmissable among the silent, heavy watch of the ones who stayed above. Harsh words entered his aural system as the two groups met, but his processors were too occupied to lend them any meaning beyond the clashing inflections of contempt and rising anger.

“49—”

The voice was lost among the tide of other information. Before his eyes was a live demonstration of the conflict Theta had outlined to him in report. It had escaped the confines of the satellites and made it down to Earth. 49 had rarely ever bothered to think of the Resistance and Army of Humanity as separate entities, but now he was watching the two grate like flint against steel.

**“49.”**

He flinched.

Friction turned to flame in the time it took for a gun to be drawn.

A heavy, gloved hand clawed between his shoulders. Distantly, he felt his body be snatched aside in slow motion as the sound of the first shot pierced through the sluggish, overloaded cloud of his thought routines. The familiar report and the ping of bullets ricocheting off metal snapped him forcibly into combat mode. They were behind a pile of machine detritus. V had raised his sunglasses and was squinting in the direction of the fight.

“Awake now, are we?” he asked.

49 made a distracted noise and crept to the edge of their cover. The Army units were the same kind of models that had subdued him in the desert. Without the element of surprise or the benefit of unit like Gamma, the fight was messy. Still obviously one-sided, but that wasn’t stopping the Resistance androids from throwing everything they had at it. If the way his skin was vibrating was to be believed, that included—

_“EMP!!!”_

They bolted. Neither of them could afford to be exposed to EMP weapons. 49 because he was susceptible, and V because he wasn’t _._ Vaulting over the omnipresent debris and swerving around the rusted piles and parts and buildings held together more by trees grown around them than their own stability, they fled. Other androids wove around them, some dropping canisters that spewed obscuring smoke to cover their escape and others still simply running as fast as they could, like deer before fire.

It was impossible to tell who was who, but there must have been more Army androids present. It was the only explanation for the growing din of combat and way other androids kept suddenly dropping from the corners of 49’s visual field. A theory that proved itself when they turned down an alley and had nearly made it out the other side before someone blocked their path with weapon drawn and black nodes visibly lining their clothes. Without his NFCS active, 49 didn’t dodge so much as he skidded into a tumbling stop with the pods grinding painfully into his back.

V didn’t stop at all.

A blue flicker crept over his glove. It bulged and creaked with whatever change was happening inside its confines. A sharp, short cry answered the blunt crunch of impact, and the android fell sparking to the ground.

“I think that might’ve been flashy,” 49 said weakly.

“Not sure what you’re talking about.” He shook out his wrist with a nonchalant smirk. “It was just a bit of EMP.”

49 climbed to his feet. It didn’t sound like this was going to stop for a while and he had no idea where they were. He pressed his back to the bricks while he tried to organize his thoughts. They couldn’t stay there, but the further away he got from his landmark, the more difficult it would be to rendezvous with Fern later.

An unarmed android turned the corner and stopped short seeing them. Goggles a little too big obscured their face, but the quick head-to-toe look and hesitant step back from the body clogging the mouth of the alley wasn’t hard to figure out. They were a Resistance android.

“We’re not Army,” 49 said quickly and placatingly, even as he stepped between the stranger and V. “We’re… We’re just wander-ins.”

They wheezed a relieved sigh and almost crumpled in half. “Ah, no wonder...! You scared the hell out of me standing around like that…” He trailed off in a way that suggested he was waiting for one of them to say something. “This is the part where you introduce yourselves. If you’ve got names, anyway.”

49 shared a mildly confused glance with V. He and Fern had picked names, but that was so they could talk to each other without arousing any suspicion. “...Do you?”

“Sure, I’m Hibiscus! But my friends call me BB.”

Unreality teased at the edge of 49’s senses. Something was weird here. A lot of things were weird here—the air smelled like dust, metal, gunpowder, and ozone, and another android was introducing themselves, but more importantly, they were asking for names in return. With his combat protocols still taking up so much of his processing, 49 could barely reconcile his answer with his doubts.

“I’m 49. And this is V…”

“Nice to meet you!” They stepped over the body and pointed back down the alley. “Head that way. There's a place to hide inside this building.”

49 latched onto the offer. Going to ground was at least something he understood. “Is it safe?”

“Safest place I know.” They strolled by, glancing up at V with a smile and an impressed whistle. “Tall, aren’t ya? Come on, just watch your head.”

Hibiscus led them through a hole in the brickwork. The building’s interior was packed with dislodged bricks and the remains of oddly angled walls and old furniture that suggested it was a proper relic, not something that machines had restored. 49 would never have suspect there was a path through it all, though it was precarious. It ended in a slanted, rusty door that looked like it had seen better days but opened with little noise. Down they went, while the noise outside receded. Descending into a basement and further into a sewer. It was drier than the seaside air, and empty save rubble and cobwebs and an occasional dim but functional lightbulb.

“Hey,” Hibiscus called out in front of a heavy iron grate tucked into a deeply shadowed corner. “It’s me!”

A musical note answered, and the grate swung open. 49 made no move to enter, and neither did V.

“It’s okay.” Hibiscus walked ahead and grinned back, waving them in. “This is my ‘home sweet home’.”

Inside, colorful baubles overwhelmed 49’s sight. They hung from the ceiling and bounced patches of light over a room where the walls were made of haphazardly welded metal, and bins full of broken glass seemed to be the primary decoration. Strangely intact chairs and tables were scattered around the room. It was hot. Some kind of fireplace sat in one corner. No, 49 recognized that setup. Masamune had something like that; it was a forge _._

Half a machine lifeform loomed atop a massive barrel. Where a different kind would have had legs or a propulsion system, this one had traded that out for a sturdy but unwieldy pair of latches to hold it right where it sat. What it lacked in mobility, it made up for with long, delicate twin-rod arms with two, four… way too many joints. And small, pronged digits that reminded him of pod claws.

“What the hell kind of machine is _that_ …?”

“That’s Chum. Say hi, Chum!”

The machine’s head spun atop its body and it answered with a cheerful jingle. In one of the most unsettling displays 49 had ever had the displeasure of watching, it opened a latch in its torso, rummaged around inside, and produced a glass bottle. In messy splotches of paint, it was labeled ‘Welcome.’

When 49 didn’t move, V reached over him to open the bottle and almost instantly recoiled with a sharp hiss. “V?! Are you—?!”

“Fine.” V waved him away and wiped at his watering eyes. “It’s alcohol.”

49 drew back from the smell as it hit him. It was alcohol alright. Isopropyl. The stuff they used for cleaning solution at repair bays. “Are we supposed to drink this?”

“It’d be scary if you did,” Hibiscus laughed. “It’s just Chum’s idea of a joke.”

Chum made a strobing sound that sounded like a broken violin trying to laugh. He took the ‘welcome’ bottle back, and offered a second bottle. This one was labeled just as messily, but with a different word.

“ _Friend_ …?” 49 read skeptically. This bottle he opened himself. It was alcohol again, but mellower. Sweet-smelling, but without the strong maple and sap scent he remembered from Devola’s brew. Without Pod he had no way of identifying it, so he lifted it up V. “What’s that smell? Not anti-freeze…”

Over the edge of his lenses, V eyed him in the way he did when 49 said something just inhuman enough to be worrying. But he took the bottle anyway. “...I doubt a machine is in the habit of making sugar, so if I had to guess...it’s honey.”

“Oooh. Been a long time since anyone got that one right.” Hibiscus hopped energetically over to them with something that looked like leather in his hands. “Do you guys eat? It’s good, I promise.”

It had been a while, and V was probably hungry, but he had the same wary lines on his face that 49 felt deepening on his.

“Hibiscus…” 49 said carefully. “Are you…a human fetishist?”

Their laugh was the kind that showed off every tooth in their mouth. There wouldn’t have been enough room to let out that much sound otherwise. “Some call us that, I guess. Fetishism’s a little strong though. We like to think of ourselves like the HHRMO. They preserve human structures and texts, but we like to preserve their behaviors and traditions and stuff.”

“Traditions…?”

“Call each other by name,” they recited proudly, only to immediately deflate. “Well…I messed that one up a bit. You’re supposed to give your name before you ask for someone else’s. Anyway, you address each other by name and be kind to travelers and offer shelter to those who need it. And make sure they don’t come to harm while they’re under your care. That’s the human way.”

“Is that right?” V asked, with chilly, unpleasant amusement that set 49 on edge.

Hibiscus’ answer was chipper, either blissfully oblivious or impressively unruffled. “Sure is!”

“Why are Army and the Resistance fighting?” 49 interjected.

"Mmm..." For the first time, Hibiscus' smile faltered and ultimately crumbled away from their face. "It's kind of a long story."


	3. [L]ike People Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 326.2: Macrocosmic problems and microcosmic concerns.

With his hood down and goggles off, Hibiscus had a face as boyish and friendly as it was absolutely filthy. All of him was like that, from his short, scraggly ponytail to the mysteriously fresh mud that clung to the edge of his cloak and packed the treads his boots. His eyes were the only sparkling thing about him. 

Starved for someone both as chatty and as strangely youthful as he was, 49 grew comfortable with their strange benefactor quickly. The environment wasn’t one where curiosity was a risk, so question after question after question poured forth, and the clearer it became that they intended to linger, the more detailed Hibiscus’ answers became.

V gladly kept silent and listened. From the scattered spray of conversation, a picture of what had been happening in the area since the end of the 14th Machine War formed.

Resistance presence often coalesced in out of the way zones of lower-aggression sectors, particularly those that served as resource hubs. They were ill-equipped for major engagements, so they held the line where they could.

Androids operating in the Army of Humanity near-exclusively formed the main force of android-kind. They handed the logistical elements of the war as well as the coordination of attacks with other bodies. They were found in high-aggression zones where there were active descents, or in motion as part of major transport operations.

Because of its unique position and relationship to the satellite Horizon-1, Sector H had always housed the Resistance and the Army in equal quantities. The Resistance more or less ‘lived’ in the area, the same as they had in Anemone’s camp. They did whatever they could, aimless by nature of what they were—Army leftovers who had survived their original descents only to be abandoned. Army androids were more function-based. They operated the launch site, oversaw local requisitions, and acted on behalf of the HHRMO to preserve the high-functioning legacy structures and machinery in the area.

The end of the war had caused a creeping decay of this order.

Weapons production ceased. Then android production ceased. They reduced launch frequency, transport frequency, payment for what few materials were still necessary. Wander-ins arrived. Nearly all of them Resistance androids looking for something, _anything,_ they could do. The HHRMO continued to make requests, and for some, the simple promise of payment was enough.

For others, this did not suffice. Those who came looking for purpose and found none worthy decided the next best thing was to return to their point of origin.

The Army was in control of all transport to and from the satellites. That was the way it had always been, but it was now unfavorable in the eyes of a group that outnumbered them 3:1. A disparity that only grew wider by the day. Like being on an incline growing insidiously steeper, the lack of a common enemy and opposing goals eroded relations and cause the area to slip into its current state. Suspicions of saboteurs and fears of factions rose and were eventually justified by an attempt to seize the launch site. A revolt quickly quelled, but the damage was not so quickly dispelled.

Ever since then, it was common for Army androids to come out to the scavenger cities to directly confront anyone they were suspicious of.

“They’re rarely right,” sighed Hibiscus. “And that’s caused a lot of bad blood with androids who are happy to scavenge and pretend nothing’s changed. Or, you know, lay in the dirt and not scavenge because there’s no point. So now we get these fights every so often.”

49 plucked at his gloves and shifted in the chair across from Hibiscus, wearing the thoughtful scowl that settled on his face when he was attempting to solve a frustrating puzzle. “Nothing’s going to be different up there and the satellites can only house so many androids. What’s the point in going so far just to get back into orbit?”

“Dunno. I’ve never spoken to anyone who wants to go back. But I heard a lot of them are really old, and old androids get very…” He rubbed awkwardly at the side of his neck. “They might’ve lost so much down here that Earth doesn’t matter to them anymore. At least up there, it’s sort of like home…probably.”

Determined to keep the mood from growing too dark, Hibiscus offered a bright grin. “It’s not all bad. Just keep your eyes open and get clear if you see Army personnel this far out in the stacks. Once it gets chaotic you can end up as a casualty if you’re not careful.”

“Is that what the Army does if they actually catch their suspect?” 49 asked, with a deepening frown. “Execute them…?”

“Oh no, casualties happen by accident. If the Army gets a hold of you, you end up in the adjustments office.” He shuddered. “Spooky place. I hear they change your personality settings or make changes to your default emotional matrix.”

V knew enough to know those were pretty words for re-programming. Even had he not, the way his companion's optic lights had turned to white-hot rings would have been easy to understand. There was no greater evil in his eyes than to have his identity tampered with.

How well V knew the feeling.

“What about you?”

It took several silent seconds before V realized Hibiscus was talking to him. “What _about_ me.”

“You have body markings,” he said glowingly, leaning forward over the back of his chair so that it tipped precariously. “I’ve seen Seaglass use makeup before, but never anyone with actual tattoos. That’s how I figured you guys were probably humanity imitators too!”

So, that’s what Hibiscus thought this was. The welcoming in of a like kind.

V had always thought 49 was more human than an android should be, and 49 had always seemed to share his opinion. It was a vexing condition of being for him, unintentional and uninvited. While he had learned to live with it, any purposeful attempt to be ‘more’ human remained confined to specific moments with specific intents. Hibiscus, and presumably the others in his cohort, wore humanity like vibrant clothes. It was only natural they’d be perceptive at picking out others who appeared to wear the same costume.

He lowered his hands from the table and tucked them into the confines of his cloak.

“Sorry,” 49 said with a conciliatory laugh. “He’s not much for being friendly with strangers.”

“Aw, that's okay. Never met one of us who was comfortable right from the start.”

The assumption of an ‘us’ was an annoyance, but V didn’t correct it. The company of androids who wouldn’t pay it any mind if he had behaviors that were a little too human was enough to let the presumptuousness slide.

“Hey, can I have some of those things you tried to give us earlier?” asked 49. “The food.”

“Yeah, help yourself!” Chum played two notes that sounded remarkably like a child saying ‘uh oh’, and Hibiscus grinned. “Don’t be a tattletale, Chum. We’ll just say I ate it.”

49 shuffled over to V with a few dry looking sticks. He paused just short of handing them over, a skeptical and uneasy look creeping across his features. He bit one cautiously like it might bite him back. V was ready for any sign of disgust, but to his surprise, 49’s eyes lit up.

“It’s good!” he beamed, excitedly shoving the rest forward.

 _Not really_ , V thought as he chewed. It was strangely sweet and had the consistency of cold chewing gum scraped off a gritty sidewalk, but it was also the only salty thing he’d tasted in nearly a year that wasn't his own blood. Given the interesting ideas androids had regarding the preparation of food, it was passable. He ate every single one.

“Wow…” Hibiscus marveled. “You really eat like you’re hungry or something.”

V stilled. A dozen times in his youth, he’d heard those exact words from this person or that who had pity enough for a vagrant child to feed him. In Hibiscus’ mouth, they were unfamiliar. Spoken with a context so different it might as well have been a different language—one he didn’t know how or if he should answer.

49 smoothed the encroaching awkwardness away with a chuckle, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “It’s hard to resist. Not every day you come across an android that knows much about cooking, you know?”

Hibiscus grinned and V stifled a sigh. He wasn’t a stranger to minding how he presented himself in order to suit his goals but pretending to be an android was a far simpler task than pretending to be an android that was pretending to be human.

A short whistle cut through the air. Chum’s head spun and a hiss of pressurization rattled through the hanging glass and opened up the same grate they had come through. Hibiscus trotted down the narrow entry hall. With all the noise he made it was impossible to tell if this place was supposed to be a secret or not.

“Hey, we have—hm? No, no; I’m fine, Seagrass—we have guests!”

The android that hovered in behind Hibiscus was little more than a reedy shadow capped with a small cloud of hair half-suppressed by a bandana. She held up a hand in a limp greeting but was quick to take a seat at one of the chairs furthest away from them. Her hands danced in a series of odd gestures. It wasn’t until Hibiscus began to answer her that he realized what she was doing.

“I’m sure they’re alright,” he said soothingly. “We’ll wait together, okay? Don’t be scared.” He took a seat beside her and pointed over. “That’s 49 and that’s V—he’s got tattoos!”

She made a cautious gesture toward Chum.

“No, I don’t think so. V knew it was honey in it though, and they both had some of that smoked stuff Pearl makes.”

Her eyes resettled on them, this time with visible interest.

“Is that a sign language?” asked 49. “I’ve never seen an android use one. Outside of field signals, anyway. Is your synthesizer damaged?”

Hibiscus looked to Seagrass, and V watched with passing curiosity the silent and motionless request for permission that passed between them, as well as its denial.

“Sorry,” he said simply. “It’s a personal thing.”

“O-oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

V tuned out their equally rushed attempts to assure one another that no offense had been committed. Seagrass was still watching him with a straight, attentive gaze. Clearly, for all their supposed compiling of human custom, no one had informed her it was rude to stare.

“Seagrass, were things quieting down any?” She shook her head with a slow and pained expression. “Hmm... Bad today then.”

49 looked to V with a restless shuffle. “I’m getting worried...”

Hibiscus looked between them. “You have a friend out there or something?” 

Before 49 could answer, a slam made them all jump. From behind the barrel that Chum perched on, an android rose up out of the floor, cursing under his breath. Bulky and covered in visible paneling where his dust-caked clothes were tattered. Chum blared a short, rude-sounding horn, and the android hissed and made a gesture too emphatic to not be obscene. Or whatever passed for obscene between an android and a machine.

“Pearl!” Hibiscus barked. “Do you have to come in like that? You’re embarrassing me in front of my guests!”

Pearl looked over his shoulder. His gaze on V was quick and apathetic, but it lingered on 49 so balefully that V found his grip shifting reflexively. Without speaking to either of them, he turned his glare back on Hibiscus. “I’ve told you not to bring strangers in here.”

“They looked like they needed help, I couldn’t just leave them.”

“You want to make a sanctuary so bad, go find a church to set up in. This is _our_ place. You don’t know who they are.”

“I know they’re like us.” Hibiscus stubbornly puffed out his chest. “V’s got body markings and knew what was in Chum’s beer. Maman will definitely want to meet them.”

Pearl clicked his teeth.

“If we are unwelcome,” said V, rising to his feet. “We’ll be on our way.”

“No, no,” Hibiscus soothed hurriedly. “It’s okay! Maman’s the only one who can make a decision about who gets to come and go. Pearl’s just mean.”

“And where is this Maman?”

“Hmm…Knowing her she’s probably out there trying to get everyone so drunk they can’t be bothered to fight.”

V raised a brow. “I was under the impression that you were not well-liked by other androids.”

“Even if we’re not well-liked because we imitate humanity too closely, nobody would hurt Maman. You’d probably have to be broken to begin with to attack her.”

From the furnace, Pearl muttered: “Have to be real stupid, too.”

49 and V glanced at one another, the question of exactly what that could mean flickering between them.

“Anyway,” said Hibiscus. “You said you were with somebody else? Now that Pearl’s back to stay with Seagrass, I can go with you to find them. There’s a lot of ways through the sewer, so it’s best to have a guide.”

V sank back into his chair with a wave of his cane. “I’ll be waiting.”

“V?” 49 said, a thin needle of alarm lacing his voice. “We should stick together.”

“I’m liable to garner the wrong kind of attention if we end up in another confrontation. Better that I’m not put in a position where I have to defend myself.”

The ‘or you’ left unspoken did not go unnoticed. V had no idea if he had held back enough to spare the life of the Army android he’d attacked, and the scanner had not taken the time to check. Whether the android had survived or not, it was a performance best not repeated. 49 relented with a drop of his shoulders and let Hibiscus lead him away.

Without the animated conversation, it was near silent. Seagrass sat in the same place and position she’d taken when she came in, immobile and unblinking as a sphinx. Pearl paid him no mind at all, and V was just as happy to pay no mind in kind.

V had little doubt they would find Fern alive. Despite a fundamental lack of attachment to life, she was precisely the kind that death would have a hard time keeping his appointments with.

He let his eyes wander the walls instead, and waited.

Despite being no less than half a kilometer underground, through a sewer, and underneath the basement of a mostly demolished building only accessible by passing through a literal hole in the wall, the hideaway was homely. Both in its innocuous ugliness and its possession of the natural, contentedly lived-in atmosphere that Fern’s shack had aspired to, but failed to ever pull off.

It was unhampered by any pretense of perfection. If things were on the floor, it was because they’d fallen there. The mismatched chairs sat the way they did because someone had been sitting in them and had carelessly not put them back as they found them. A series of deeply mismatched personal tastes mingled here and reminded him of the few areas where he’d tenuously coexisted with Dante as a child. It was a bar, living room, kitchen, forge, brewery, museum, secret base, and whatever else its inhabitants desired or needed it to be.

The result was a private cosmos where utility married a dozen artifacts of personality and produced a near-overpowering sense of human touch. That it was pretended on part of a few androids and a machine so bizarre V wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he came from the amusement park did little to dampen the effect.

A gentle tolling of bells parted the quiet and sent a discordant wave of adrenaline creeping through him and settling in his left arm like rising flood waters. But it was only Chum harmlessly signaling the new hour.

 _What’re you getting so jumpy for?_ Griffon whispered on the edge of his senses. _Relax!_

V glanced down and flexed his left hand. Though it was well-covered, he could feel both claws and scales shifting against the leather. Was it his imagination, or was the dragon getting more…

Seagrass sprang up.

Picking up something beyond V’s senses, she hopped from her chair with impressively light steps for an android and flitted around a corner V had not previously noted was there.

He peered again at the walls around him. The arrangement of the junk and the constant flickering of the firelight on all the glass made the dull metal dance and glitter, and he was suddenly sure there must be a dozen tricks to this room that he could not see.

From beyond the wall, a low, husky voice laughed. “I’m fine, I’m fine! …A guest? Hibiscus again, I’m sure. Patterns…? You mean tattoos? Really, that's a new one...”

Maman was unmissable when she entered. Not because of the dusty dress she wore, or because the skin had worn down from her forearms to completely bare plates, or because she wore several articles of obvious jewelry—albeit welded from scrap metal or made of the same glass baubles that adorned the ceiling. All of that was paltry compared to the fact that she was heavily pregnant.

He’d learned that androids could be ‘outfitted’, but that had no bearing on their collective inability to reproduce. This was another form of imitation, and among the first to actively sour him.

Perhaps that reaction was not uncommon, because as she leaned over Chum’s barrel and reached into his chest cavity to retrieve a bottle, her eyes never left him. “My modification bothering you?”

“How you modify yourself doesn’t concern me,” he said, too sharply to be as dismissive as he’d intended. “But you should take care that the extent of your imitation does not slip into delusion.”

“What a charmingly unnecessary bit of advice.” She smiled right through him, even as she drained the bottle. “I can self-mod until the world starts turning again, I’m aware I can’t give birth.”

“Yet you call yourself Maman?”

“I don't call myself that, no. Has no one cared enough to call you by a nickname before?” V’s mind momentarily blanked. Griffon called him by a dozen names but it was hardly a matter of caring. “What do _you_ call yourself?”

“…V.”

She looked at him like she didn’t believe him. With her drink emptied, she sat the bottle back inside of Chum and gave him a fond pat before she lumbered toward the wall behind the barrel with the distinctive waddle of a woman dangerously close to delivering. Despite having just chugged down a bottle of machine-made liquor, she even sat her hand atop her stomach in an absent, protective maternal gesture that made his throat feel like it was closing.

“This way, V.”

Seagrass watched him follow Maman with the same passive stare from the exact same seat she’d been sitting in before, while Pearl was watching with narrowed eyes and crossed arms. Neither of them moved after he passed beyond their line of sight. It wasn’t an ambush. They awaited whatever judgment Maman was about to pass on him.

The corridor led unexpectedly up. Stairs that noticeably failed to creak let out in a room decorated even more garishly as the one below. There were no colored panels of glass here, only strange shadows cast by the scraps and junk objects jutting from the walls and the two dim bulbs mounted at unusual angles on two of the walls and on the floor. Here too the walls were hard to focus on. Too much noise. Too many jutting shapes and strange shadows. He was certain there were at least two other inconspicuous exits that his eyes would not find on their own.

The click of a door closing gently behind him raised his hackles. The hand that slithered across his lower back made him whirl.

Maman took the strike of his cane in full against her barren forearms. As with Fern, it did little actual damage. She waved his gun in her other hand, held unthreateningly by its barrel.

“My name is Wisteria,” she said placidly. “Until I decide you’re welcome to call me Maman, that’s the only name I expect to hear out of your mouth. Are we clear?”

“…Fine by me.”

She swayed past him to what looked to be the remains of a boat. It had been turned hull-up to form a table and she sat beside it, placing the gun fully out in the open on its surface. She gestured for him to join her, but he kept his distance.

Her demeanor had changed. Settled into something different and potentially dangerous. The android before him was not ‘Maman’ at all. This was whoever Wisteria had been before she decided to _become_ Maman. She knew it, too. Because as neutral as she appeared in her dingy dress and mismatched construction boots, she was watching him with a relaxed but intense stare. Like an opponent she could handle if she kept her wits about her, rather than a guest.

“Which descent mission were you part of?”

V blinked. He only half-remembered what those were, and that was not among the questions Fern had prepared them for.

Wisteria did not give him a full two seconds to cobble together an answer before she moved on to a far more dire question: “What are you?”

“An android.”

“No you’re not.”

They stared at one another without any change in expression, while the air grew dense and stormy between them.

Wisteria checked the magazine of V’s gun. Not menacingly, but not without purpose. Fern had given it to him with two bullets, and that was how many remained. Enough to start something, and enough to finish it. “Hospitality, reciprocity, sanctuary are very pretty words. BB loves them and the things they mean. But I like words like ‘safety’ and ‘security’ and ‘limited access’. They seem to do better at keeping people alive.”

“And so the role of guardian falls to you.”

“Glad you understand me. Once more: What are you?” V hesitated, and again she gave him no time to think. “There’s only two answers. You’re a machine, or you’re a YoRHa on the run. News travels and they say at least two are still active. Which is it?”

“Neither.”

“…You’re not an alien are you?”

He gave a dry laugh. “You don’t write anything off as impossible, do you?”

“No,” she clicked the magazine forcefully back into place. “I don’t.”

A slight smirk tugged his lips. Being threatened, even so subtly, was a disappointing turn of events, but all he could think of was Fern’s ever-present concern that he was going to get himself shot. Maybe he would and maybe he wouldn’t, but he hadn’t come all this way to take a bullet from an android pretending at motherhood. He was left little recourse but to give her an answer she could neither prove nor refute and hope that she accepted it. As Theta had.

“How old are you, Wisteria?”

She flexed her skinless forearms and the plates made an audible pop as some of them flexed out of wherever V guessed they were supposed to be anchored. “Old.”

“Are you familiar with Emil?” He traced a circle in the air with his cane. “A large stone skull with a grinning face.”

“I’ve seen him,” she said with a nod. “Hundreds of him, in fact. And thanked the stars he was on our side.”

“I am the same sort of being.” He unlatched the long glove and let it drop to the floor. “A weapon created by mankind before they fell.”

Wisteria’s eyes traveled along his scaled arm, her eyes reflecting the shining violet light that pulsed between the dark ridges. Her finger tapped twice at the gun’s barrel before she set it down and folded her hands atop the curve of her stomach. It was impossible to tell if she believed him or not. Her expression said only that she didn’t have the necessary information to know anything for certain. Only that her intuition had been correct, and he was not like them.

“Why are you pretending to be an android?”

“Passing for a machine would be too much trouble.”

This time she was the one caught off guard. A sputter of laughter escaped in spite of whatever private opinions she harbored. “Not a bad assessment!”

A scuffle in the hall turned both their heads. An inquisitive, high energy voice—Hibiscus. 49’s lower but more insistent voice followed, and Fern’s came right behind it with the same lack of yield. Their footsteps rushed upward chaotically, as though they were tripping over one another to reach the top.

At least had the grace to open the door instead of kicking it down. 49 came right to his side, searching his face for any sign of duress, while Fern lingered slightly behind, her eyes wide and a little horrified as they fell on Wisteria.

A quiet "Holy _shit"_ slipped out of her mouth.

Wisteria looked between both of them before her attention returned to V. She might still be reserving her judgment on exactly what he was, but her subtle smile suggested she understood perfectly well _who_ he was to the two androids that had barged in to check on him.

“Well, V… Seems like you got your own little family.” His brow twitched, but he didn’t bother to deny it. Whatever made her comfortable enough to shuffle by him without any more of this. “It’s a hostile world to take too much after humans in right now. So long as you’re good to mine, you and yours are welcome here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vergil’s absolute banger of an official theme released Monday, the fandom cracked the lyrics today, we get NieR remake news tomorrow, and the next Visions of V is Friday. It’s nothing but dubs this week.


	4. Paradigm Shift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 328: A lively city, dead hearts, and a long, long train ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ngl I deadass forgot today (yesterday?) was Wednesday because I blocked Tuesday out. Tuesday was...dire.

One train, five stops.

First one at 0700 from the narrowest part of the strait between the mainland and the central H island. The signs all read ‘Mainland’. Barebones train platform, no evidence of support structures or offices. Fresh concrete, new rails, a shoreline made of smooth worn debris lodged rusty sediment stretching out almost a kilometer into the strait. The androids from the area—the ones grumbling about freight restrictions being imposed again today—called it ‘the horn of Coquelles’. Limited megaflora, low skyline. A few partially maintained buildings with dim lights moving like fireflies through the broken windows.

No sign of any guards at the platform, just the single operator. Who switched with a different android right before the doors closed. Twenty-four-hour shifts then; the train wouldn’t be back at that stop again until 0700 the next day. Explained why they responded to every little question like it was a pain, but more importantly, suggested that whoever handled the logistics of building things in Sector H didn’t really care about interacting with the mainland.

Next stop was Sorting Yard A. The train would arrive at 0830, undergo a sweep, depart at 1100, and the stop after that would be Sorting Yard B, where there would be another sweep before it crossed the western sea to reach its last two stops: the stockyard and the North Atlantic Exchange.

But that was getting ahead of himself.

The train was a smooth ride compared to the trucks 49 was used to. With his upper half resting on the frame of an empty window, it was easy to be lulled by the vibrations and gentle rocking of the car. Any other time he might’ve been able to enjoy the unhurried pace, but he’d been antsy ever since Fern warned him about the way the train operated. At a minimum, it would take thirty hours to get back to the scavenger city where V and the humanity fetishists were.

No, not fetishists. Preservationists? Imitators?

Maman’s.

Whatever else they were, they were Maman’s.

His currently unprocessed feelings about seeing other androids casually mimic human behavior luckily had no bearing on his goals. What left 49’s leg bouncing with poorly contained nerves was leaving V with them. 49 might not be a reverent android, but rules and regulations on the Bunker went to a lot of trouble to enforce YoRHa staying in their place relative to humans, from things as small as saluting with the left hand instead of the right to the ban on emotion. They were modeled after humans, but to imitate them too closely was to display a punishable lack of respect for their creators. (Funny how fast things like that stopped mattering after actually _meeting_ a human.) It wasn’t an accident Maman’s group was labeled something as harsh as ‘fetishist’ when something more accurate and benign would be a better description. Something like ‘experiential data archivist’. They weren’t looked on kindly or even with basic neutrality, and if V was with them, neither was he.

The same could be said of Fern and 49 himself. All the androids who had ever seriously tried to harm him had hate in common; for him personally, or for YoRHa in general. They weren’t the only ones to feel that way by far, they were just the only ones whose hate outweighed their sense of self-preservation. As much as he hated to acknowledge it, the power gap between YoRHa and other models was threatening.

In exchange for stealth, none of them could rely on intimidation to temper any hate that came their way.

If Fern was also worried about this, it didn’t show. She sat beside him with her arms thrown casually up over the backs of the hard seating, staring ahead at nothing. Everything about her gave off the impression she was intimately familiar and maybe a little bored with everything they were about to do today. Which was impressive since neither of them really knew what to expect.

She also managed to make it seem coincidental that they were traveling together, but that part he already understood. Because she had been to this Sector before, there was a small, but non-zero chance someone would recognize her. If that happened, it would be best that 49 did not appear to be anything more than a passing acquaintance who happened to be going the same way.

Central H island made that an easy ask during the long wait before Sorting Yard B. While the service team checked for sabotage or stowaways or whatever else might have been an issue, he couldn’t help but stare at out at the sprawl beyond the platform. Map data would be invaluable in a place like this. The potential for escape trajectories alone—

Fern cleared her throat as he moved unthinkingly toward the stairs. “1100.”

He nodded, straightened himself up, and reminded himself to stay focused.

For all the preserved and fully operational buses and trucks coughing and chugging around, traffic rules didn’t seem to exist. Staying out of the way was difficult. ‘The way’ was everywhere. There was no order in the thoroughfare, only moving bodies and moving vehicles weaving around one another in a constant state of near-collision. Even sticking close to the buildings didn’t offer 49 as much of an opportunity to look around without almost being run over as he hoped.

His attention quickly turned skyward. At least if he could get off the ground he would only have other androids to worry about. A high point where he could better understand the cluttered, busy environment would be helpful too.

A radio tower caught his attention, so he trotted toward that.

At the foot of the tower, standing directly in front of the ladder, an android with black diamond-shaped buttons on his clothes stood guard. 49 stopped short a fraction too abruptly, and their eyes met.

He ran a dozen emergency scenarios through his mind and was half-way through picking the best one when a horn honked a fraction of an inch from his head and nearly scared him out of his skin. By the time he was done alternatively hopping out of the way and yelling at the driver who could have easily gone around him, the Army android’s gaze had moved on. In the crowd of so many others, 49 was just another lost wander-in unworthy of attention or note.

The radio tower was no good, but eventually, he found his way into a mismatched building that might have been a skyscraper once. It was hard to tell. Parts of the exterior looked light and new and other parts were the heavy-looking architecture that he’d noticed a lot more since coming to this part of the planet. Soft light greeted him when he stepped inside. A clock face made of shattered glass and dark, ornate iron sat in a short pillar in the middle of the floor and cast a glow like warm moonlight on the one or two hundred androids packed inside. The floor was cracked in a few places, and scuffed by frequent traffic, but it was even and smooth. And just across it were unguarded stairs.

It had already taken him longer than he expected just to find this place, so he eagerly trotted through the room. He tried not to get too distracted, but he noticed a lot of unusual materials changing hands and a din of the distinctive ping that confirmed a successful digital currency exchange.

At the stairwell, he paused, pinned as the pieces of a puzzle he hadn’t meant to solve clicked into place. This wasn’t a commercial facility, but they had made it into one with their presence and business.

They were shopping.

His black box grew light and sickly hot at the same time and he nearly let himself be pulled away from the stairs. It wasn’t the way he thought it would be, but they could shop here. Maybe somewhere in this very building, he’d find… No. There was no point. Even if there was a t-shirt in the building right now, it didn’t matter if she wasn’t there to look for it with him.

He took the stairs two at a time and didn’t look back.

A bell greeted him at the top. Or the remains of one. A hunk of cracked but carefully polished bronze that nonetheless managed a weary hum when he touched on it. Kneeling, he peered beneath it, but the mechanism to make it ring was gone. Relief washed over him. Which he quickly chided himself for—it was irrational to be wary of this old thing. It was just a normal bell.

Though the tower wasn’t the highest thing around, it gave him the view he wanted.

Fern had given him the impression that Central H was purely operational, but everything he saw said otherwise. The buses running constantly here and there through roads that weren’t nearly as geometric as the ones back in the city, it was easy to miss, but there were plenty of androids that weren’t working. They milled through, getting from point A to point B, stopping to buy things, bustling and busy in a way that had nothing in common with the pre-descent rush he was accustomed to. He’d seen androids in numbers like this before. Just once, in the skies over the city ruins during the final descent. But he’d never seen so many just—just _being_. If androids truly weren’t initially designed for war, it was possible that the ones that weren’t driven to despair were seeing a resurfacing of their base programming.

Maybe that was why it looked like an awkward recreation of everything he’d always thought cities full of living humans would be.

Fern was right where he left her when he arrived back at the platform. Not that it was a surprise, but he didn’t know how she could stand doing nothing for so long. Or they, he guessed—2B had been good at standing by or at attention for long periods of time too.

Twenty minutes later, they were permitted to board.

Rolling over the sea from the mainland to Sorting Yard A hadn’t offered his mind much to do, but the route between the sorting yards A & B went over land and held a lot more of his attention. Radio towers pocked the landscape like shadowed bootlaces tying the sky to the hills. The communications network was impressively comprehensive in this Sector, which only made sense if they needed to have regular interfaces with an orbital satellite. Manufacturing sites lined the rivers, puffing out spreading stacks of heavy, greasy smoke that caught the light and turned gold in the upper atmosphere. Every once in a while, a floodlight went off and revealed a heavily fortified gate that stretched away into the shadows of the trees.

A few minutes before the train came to a stop, the trees gave way abruptly. In a neat line, like they’d been sliced away by a razor. Fern stepped off the train and off the platform ahead of him, but he didn’t bother to hurry after her. There were only so many places she could have gone.

Sorting yard B was flat and sterile. Clouds passing near the horizon bounced the sun’s light and turned the scenery red and gold but brought no warmth or life to it. There were no roads or androids clogging the area. Only warehouses arranged in ruthlessly regular rows with the occasional tall lighting pole jutting up between them. Most of them were off, except where androids passed near them and they clicked on to release a cone of pale orange light. More dim lights blinked on and off inside the warehouses as androids came and went.

The ‘general office’ was just a repurposed warehouse near the front of one of the rows. He caught up with Fern and both went in together.

The first thing that greeted them inside was a large sign that blocked further entry.

**Occupational Offerings:**

**< \----- **Maintenance (Examination required)

System maintenance

Mechanical maintenance

Sorting **\----- >**

Quality control

Specialty: ~~(Recommendation Required)~~ _See office management_

Launch engineers

Comms & Admin

**NOTICE: FOR HHRMO REQUISITIONS AND EXCHANGE FULFILLMENT, PROCEED TO WAREHOUSE 4A**

_Opposite directions,_ 49 thought dourly.

Fern took off without any sign of being bothered and disappeared around the left side of the sign. He strained his aural system listening to the sound of her footsteps. At the very least, maybe he could get an idea what the layout was like before he went the other way. He could hear other people, he just had no idea where they could possibly be with so much of the front end cramped by the sign.

A gruff voice rose over the faint whisper of other conversations. _“First time in this office?”_

 _“Yes.”_ Fern’s voice. Were they just standing in the hall talking?

_“Which occupation you here for?”_

A closer, slightly annoyed voice snagged 49’s attention. “Do you need help?”

He jumped. The android standing at the rightmost corner of the sign was a female model and an obvious Army operant by the black diamond-shaped buttons on the shoulders of her coat. She was smiling, but there was nothing pleasant behind it. She looked just as annoyed as she sounded.

“U-uhm, no.” He walked toward her. “Just reading…”

She backed up to let him by and walked beside him down the tight hallway. He could still just barely pick up Fern’s conversation echoing from the far side of the room.

_“—stationed between here and the Isle, so an exam is required—verify your clearance level—”_

_“Sure, sure."_ She talked like it was a process she was already familiar with and had resigned herself to ages ago. “Whatever you need.”

Again, a voice just ahead of him snapped him back: “Eyes front.”

He whipped his head forward to find himself staring at his reflection in a red pane of glass attached to something that looked like a handheld radar. High-pitched whining filled his head and it strobed twice in a way that made his feel strange. Floaty and disconnected from his body. He barely noticed the Army android lower the device.

“Some disorientation is normal,” she murmured, squinting at a panel on the back of the dish. “10 March 11945? That your correct activation date?”

“Oough…”

He leaned one hand against the nearest wall and clenched his eyes to block out the way his visual field lurched and pitched. His activation date? Was that what she was asking about? Last year was way too recent, and March 10 of all dates? That was—

Right. That was the date ‘this’ body would have been activated.

“Yeah,” he managed. “That’s my activation date.”

“No wonder you’re so small. They were really trying to stretch those resources that last generation, huh.”

He glared blearily in her direction. “I’m not _that_ small…”

“Uh huh.” She sat the device down on a shelf among a dozen other that ranged from similar in design to significantly less benign-looking. “Which satellite you from?”

“Гримизна.” If he survived, he’d be sure to thank 1S for all his extremely tedious notes on the subject.

“Ah, so you’re from north-central sectors? Haven’t seen a lot of your group come this way.” Her tone changed, almost imperceptibly. “What’s got you out here looking for work?”

The question was innocuous by itself. A little redundant to the unknowing ear since every wander-in was there for the same reason. If he hadn’t seen the unrest in Normandy for himself, he might’ve dismissed it entirely. But he had. Up close. And he could hear the subtle threat in her question.

He took a deep breath. “There’s a big machine nest out in Sector F. Most of the camp nearby is still fighting them—they’ve been there a long time and they don’t want to give up the place so many of them died to protect. I’d rather…get away from all that. Don’t want to die for a war that already ended, you know?”

Her expression didn’t change. It occurred to him she had probably heard a thousand stories like that since last year. She might be convinced he wasn’t a threat, but she didn’t care why he was actually there. She never had. None of the Army androids stationed anywhere in the sector did.

“I see,” she said curtly and flicked a small, sealed packet at him. “Quality control operates on an as-needed basis. Install that chip to receive assignments, take it out whenever you want. I’d ask you to return it, but none of you ever do.”

He waited, but she didn't say anything else. “...That’s it?”

She flashed him that same 'go away' smile. “Why, do you have questions?”

“I guess not, I’m just—I thought this would be a more involved process for some reason.”

“Are you familiar with quality control in the context of scavenging?”

“I’m good at identifying the condition of materials.”

“Good enough, you’re hired,” she said, offering a limp imitation of applause. “You’ll be good at it, or you won’t; either way, it’s a body in position. Who knows, maybe since you’re young it’ll take a few years before you throw yourself into the sea.”

Grimacing, he shoved the packet down into his pocket and turned to escape the suffocating confines of the general office. He’d thought the coliseum androids could say bleak things. The Army androids seemed like they were just one upset away from unraveling and possibly going berserk.

He hoped Fern and V left a little before him just in case he had to do something drastic to get onto Horizon-1.

Back at the platform, he sagged onto the stairs and waited. For the train to be ready or for Fern, whichever came first. There was no sound on the wind. Not the waves, not the buzz of the radio towers. Not even a single lonely cricket chirping in the distance.

He pulled the packet out and examined the chip. Until he ran an analysis on it, he wasn’t going to be installing it, but he was curious. Fern’s occupation sounded like it would take her to the Isle of Man in person, while he would probably remain right here among all these warehouses. It was the closest he could get with his skillset. Maybe if he identified something of extremely high quality and complexity, he’d be able to talk someone into letting him cross with it?

Well, no use formulating those kinds of ideas just yet.

Fern arrived only a few moments before the train was scheduled to leave, trotting up to him with easy energy and a jaunty smile. “You get your job?”

“…Yeah?”

“Me too.” She gave a loose stretch and casually settled her weight onto one leg. “Not looking forward to riding this goddamn train again, though. You headed back to the mainland?”

Oh, this was an act. “Yeah. I’ve gotta install some kinda chip, but it feels weird to just do it out in the open like this. Kinda exposed, you know?”

“Mmm, yeah, I get you. Wouldn’t be shit for cover out here if you were getting fired at. I wouldn’t want to expose my OS chip out here either, makes me nervous just thinking about it.” The doors of the train slid open all at once to the sound of the platform attendant yelling tiredly about the next stop being the Stockyard. “Right on time. I thought I was gonna miss it and end up waiting here another half a day.”

He followed her with a bemused, slightly dazed stare. The difference in Fern’s ability to pretend and his own might as well have been the difference between the stars and the sun. She sprawled out with her arms thrown back over the seat and continued casually chatting like he was a travel buddy she’d taken a sudden interest in.

It wasn’t until the train pulled off that she suddenly went quiet. She let her head swivel around like she was watching the cars ahead of them jostle into motion, and the strangely personable demeanor drained right out of her.

Right as the wind started to pick up through the car, she crossed her arms. “There’s guards on the Isle of Man.”

He glanced around the car to see what she must have already taken in: they were alone. “We did figure there might be.”

“And limited access internally.”

“Do you know which areas you’ll be able to go to?”

“Probably not the ones you’re hoping for.” Her foot began to tap. Not quickly, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her fidget at all. “I have an orientation in three days once they generate an access chip based on my unit address. As long as I can get in contact with other androids inside the Isle, I can definitely get more information. Think you’ll find anything about getting to the Night Kingdom?”

“They have to send materials over there sometime, don’t they? If there’s a terminal where the requisitions come in from I might be able to hack it and manufacture a request.”

She nodded. “Good. Don't do that too quick though. New people get watched closely and even if not, you don't want to send us off before I get the information you need. First thing we should aim for is some idea for when the launches happen.”

“You’re aiming for me to leave before you?”

“Ideally.” Her arms uncrossed and dropped to her lap, where her fingers stretched out in a too-tense grip. “This isn’t the kind of place I’d want to leave you to fend for yourself while we hopped on a boat. At least not without a plan. These Army androids are…”

“Yeah…” he whispered, rubbing at his sleeves. “I noticed. I was kind of hoping you guys would leave before me too.”

Fern glanced his way, and he thought he saw her crack a smirk, but she went back to watching the scenery roll by outside to quickly. “When’s the next moonrise?”

“Fifteen days.” High above his head, Horizon-1 passed overhead, reflecting the fiery gold rays beaming up through the clouds. “I don’t think either of us is going to be able to make our travel arrangements that fast. But whether or not we can make it in time for the next moonrise after that depends on you. How long do you think it'll take you to completely infiltrate?”

Fern drummed her fingers pensively against thighs and nodded at whatever calculation was going on behind her cool gaze.

“Gimme three weeks.”


	5. The Human Dress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 331: Supplies, extended family, and arriving at mutual working agreements.

One place was generally as good as another when it came to the matter of sleep. Shelter wasn’t mandatory. Comfort didn’t matter. Isolation was ideal, but it was impossible to have spent a summer on a boat or in a truck and not have accustomed to sleeping in close quarters with others. Or so V had thought.

He couldn’t recall any discomfort or reservations when Arkham had squirreled him away into the home his wife and child inhabited. But casually stepping into the gathering area, full of warmth both literal and not, left him off-center. He muttered to himself he simply wasn’t used to sleeping around strangers, ignored Griffon’s whispered correction ‘ _you mean without your fwiends~?’,_ and avoided thinking too hard about it.

“You’re awake!” a too-excited voice proclaimed. “Good morning!”

V sank down two tables away from Hibiscus under a bleary notion that it might buffer the high noon intensity of the android’s energy. “Is it morning?”

“Yup! About 5:30. You’d be a nice, early riser if the sun still moved. You’re a lot better at sleeping than Seaglass is.”

He offered nothing but a fuzzy stare in response. The question of how one could be bad at sleeping bubbled but didn’t rise anywhere near the surface. No doubt it was an android problem, and he had plenty of his own to tend to. First among them being the completely empty bottles among his supplies.

“Where do you get water?”

“You can just have the beer if you like!”

Heavy, clomping steps spared V the need to decline. “That’s not what he asked for, BB.”

Wisteria appeared with a crate balanced on her hip like it weighed nothing. A glassy rattling accompanied her movements. The empty mouths of two dozen multi-colored bottles gleamed in the light as she set it down on the table Hibiscus was seated at.

“He’s a guest,” Hibiscus emphasized meekly. “I thought I should at least offer.”

“We’re still androids no matter how closely we imitate human behaviors.” Wisteria ruffled the filthy strings of Hibiscus’ hair. “And you can’t pour beer in your filtration system, right V?”

V nodded slowly. True to her word, Wisteria didn’t seem to mind his presence or the pretense he was operating under, but even fully awake it was hard to tell if she was trying to help him or threaten him.

“Oh yeah, you guys only just came in, so you probably haven’t had to do any filter maintenance yet.” Hibiscus frowned in the cheerfully apologetic way that only someone solicitous down to their core would consider a reasonable expression to direct at a stranger. “Filtration fluid is hard to come by in this sector, but you can get de-salinized water down-coast.”

“Down-coast…”

“Carry that for me and I’ll show you the way,” said Wisteria. ‘That’ being an empty metal box sitting on a chair next to Chum’s perch. It might have been clean enough to be reflective if it had not been thoroughly scratched and scoured.

V shot her a dispassionate stare but rolled up his sleeve with a yielding sigh. “A man that doesn’t work, doesn’t eat, is it?”

She gave a surprisingly satisfied smile. “Glad you know how it goes.”

V didn’t mind as much as he thought he would.

Now that they were in a place where action was required to move forward, inactivity didn’t sit well with him. Fern and 49 were hard at work to open the necessary paths to the moon and the night kingdom. It seemed only right that V should also make use of his ample free time, but how and to what precise end eluded him.

Falling in with the human fetishists offered a minimally stressful form of camouflage, at the cost of being shunned by the greater local presence. He would not have casually approached most of them anyway, much less without Fern or 49 in his company, but the option was no longer easily pursued. The small pool of Wisteria’s family were his guides through this area now. If he wanted for anything, they would have to be his leads as well.

Maintaining a cheerful and casual façade was 49’s specialty, as blending in and mingling was for Fern. At best, V could be neutral and even border on agreeable, but he harbored no illusions about the kind of person he was. In order to make progress in his own way, he would have to make use of his primary asset: his humanity. He didn’t need to appeal to any conventional sense of normality, nor did he need to reveal himself to them. It was enough that he had more experience than they did, brief though it was, at living like a human. 

Among this group, that should prove the sort of knowledge that would carry weight.

As they surfaced into the twilight, Wisteria dipped her head toward his pack and the four bottles inside. “I hope you don’t have it in mind to fill up all of those for yourself.”

“And if I did?”

“You’ll end up disappointed. It’s not given away in bulk.” His eyes dropped skeptically to her entire box of empty bottles. She patted the side of it confidently. “I’m a bit of a special case.”

“Then I’ll find the water I need elsewhere.”

“The water within three zones of the stacks will corrode an android’s filter in a matter of weeks. It’s rained pollution so long even the springs are tainted.”

He scowled, his lips pressing into a long, thin line. “And you tell me this _now_?”

She didn’t quite smile, but her expression was passive and easy-going as she took up the hem of her dress in her free hand and stepped with care down over the rubble. “An influx of wander-ins who mostly get into the business of scavenging makes for a sharp uptick in the amount of fresh filtration fluid needed in a given sector. Combine that with the war suddenly ending, transport getting sparse, and motivation to maintain supply chain all but fading away, and you get a shortage. A shortage means a lot of androids turn to pure water per the standard field manual as a theoretically omnipresent means of staying mobile. Administration is quick to see to the need for mass water purification on the islands, but not out here.”

“Administration,” V repeated in the precise cadence she’d used, all but tasting the mild yet unmissable disdain. “You’re the first I’ve heard to call the Army that.”

“That’d be because I’m not specifically talking about the Army.”

“The HHRMO, then.”

She gave a short huff of laughter. “Did BB tell you about that?”

“I had prior knowledge of them.”

From the corner of her eye, she shot him a curious look. “…Administration is just the word I use for whoever it is that pushes the money around. Not commanders, but the executive types up above their heads who decide where the resources go and whether or not androids even get built. They didn’t see fit to move the Army or the HHRMO for water supply on the mainland. So, the Resistance built desalinization plants themselves. Inexpertly, of course. Damn things work fine enough, they just take a lot of effort and they’re slow. And they could only build so many so quick using just the materials salvaged out of Normandy. Luckily, most androids can go awhile on just a bit of water if they’re careful.”

She hopped down a ledge into spotty but open grasses and let her hem fall. “But you have to drink it for a lot more than mobility, don’t you?”

He stepped easily down beside her, pushing his hair back out of his face. “Are we asking each other questions now?”

She shrugged. “You’re free to not answer me. But you seem like the type who hates wasting effort and I doubt you’re going to be able to sweet talk the distributor into filling more than one of those bottles.”

On the edge of his hearing, Griffon snickered.

V's eyes rolled closed. Wisteria’s keen insight was beginning to grate on his nerves, and he disliked even more that she was toying with him so effortlessly. But she was the matriarch among his hosts and there was little to be done but play by her rules.

Even if it did mean another game of twenty goddamn questions. “Yes. I need it for more than mobility.”

“You need it the way the animals do.”

“Yes.”

“Food too.”

“Yes.”

“What about Fern and 49?”

A pop of his knuckles atop his cane answered. His voice followed steady, dark, and deep as the shadows around them. “They’re androids.”

“…Hm.”

The conversation ended. It was just abrupt enough that V was left in wary silence, then in expectant silence which ultimately dwindled down to quiet puzzlement. The minutes stretched from single digits to double and she asked him nothing further. Not understanding what it was Wisteria wanted or was working him to figure out left him bothered for the rest of the journey.

And it was a long, _long_ journey. One of nearly five hours over gentle hills pocked, then dotted, then only occasionally marred by machine debris. 

When they finally arrived, it was to a strip of pebble-strewn beach with a dozen or more structures that looked a bit like greenhouses assembled from scrap. Steam clouded their interiors, and he could make out flickering from within their lower compartments. V didn’t know much about how these plants were meant to work, but they seemed like glorified boilers. A series of attendants manned each one, enforcing order on the modest crowds gathered around. None had a single black diamond to be spotted on their clothes. None had a visible face, either. Seemed it was a position that might be dangerous enough to require total anonymity.

Wisteria marched to one on the far end. The thirty or so other androids waiting their turn drew back from her like she was the subject of a nasty and possibly contagious curse. There was a hushed and harried murmur. They danced on nervous feet like sheep deciding whether or not they possessed the strength to oust something that did not belong among them. Most of them just scuttled away. The ones who may have gotten bold lost their nerve when they lost the advantage of significant numbers and could only manage to sullenly stick to their place in line.

She paid none of this any mind, so V didn’t either. When her turn had come, she handed her crate over to the attendant, and they handed over an entirely different box filled with an equal number of bottles, though all of these were sealed with gooey-looking rubber. 

“Is this your latest family member?” they asked in a friendly, staticky voice and held their hands out toward V. “I’ll take that box. The usual, Mam?”

“Please. And no, this one’s got his own family. We’re just entertaining each other awhile.” Her tone didn’t lack in the pleasant familiarity the two obviously shared, but the way she crossed her arms was business-like. “His group numbers three and I’ll vouch. Wander-ins all. You mind if he picks up on their behalf?”

“Sure thing. You got bottles, friend?” V reached behind his back and tugged three bottles free. It left one empty, but better that than only one. “Alright. I’ll have it run out to you at the usual spot. Nice meeting you.”

The ‘usual spot’ was further still down-shore. Far enough away that Wisteria wouldn’t upset the other androids, V presumed. She picked up a few pebbles and idly chucked them across the dark but uncluttered waves.

V kept his eyes on the occasional glint of optic lights turning their way like animal eyes in the distance. “Was that a friend of yours?”

“Another family member,” she said coolly. “From a different group. They had some hard opinions about living with a machine, so they split off from us instead.”

“And you trust them not to expose you?”

“If I didn’t, they’d all be dead.” V glanced aside at her, but she wasn’t smiling or glancing back at him to gauge his response. She tossed another stone. “There’s no hard feelings or anything. They don’t hate Chum, but they do hate machines, so they don’t live with us. Extended family was complicated like that for humans too, wasn’t it?”

V didn’t remember having other relatives. Other adults spotted his early life, but none who shared blood with him. It wasn’t as though Sparda would have had anything like that, and his mother had never talked about her lineage. If she was Umbran, he could only assume her parents must have been the same.

“I suppose so.”

It wasn’t a long wait before Wisteria’s estranged family member trotted out to them. The box had been filled with rough, white crystals of sea salt and the filled bottles nestled in the pile. V didn’t relish the reality that he had to carry it for the next five hours, but the alternative was the box of filled bottles Wisteria tucked under her arm. 

They were back in the hills by the time he realized she was watching their surroundings. Again the glow of wolfish eyes flickered from the shadows. A dull thump sounded from ahead of them. Heavy enough for V to feel it through his worn soles. Wisteria stepped over it and reached under her dress. The next stone to be thrown, she answered with a thunderous shot that rendered the offending object a rain harmless dust.

V brushed his shoulders off. “Nothing apologetic about you is there…”

She squinted over her shoulder at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

A rock thrown low and quick thudded against her ankle with a decidedly metallic resonance. She swore and stumbled and in her determination to not drop her cargo, sacrificed her balance.

V dropped both salt and cane to catch her. She stared up at him in surprise, and he was quick to avert his eyes and haul her properly back to her feet.

“Thanks.” There was numbness in her voice, but frustration came quickly to fill the space that fortitude usually occupied. “First time in a long time one of the bastards actually got me.”

“You do this often _,_ then.”

“Every time.” She stooped to assess the salt. The box had landed upright, so only a handful had been lost. “I know I can take care of myself. It’d be a different matter to let one of the others come out here. Not all of them would fight back.”

“And you’d rather yourself hurt before them,” he said bitterly. “I’m sure they’re fond of that.”

“I told you, I can take care of myself.”

“Of course. Until you fail to. Or in your case, until you paint the target on your back too bold.” He leaned down to retrieve his cane, but could not settle his grip on it for the rapid drumming of his fingers. “Does imitation mean that much to you?”

“It does.” She lifted the box and placed it back in V’s hands with no sign of offense. “Don’t take what BB might’ve told you about us too much to heart, V. He’s young and…high-spirited, I think is the word. Research and recreation of the human legacy are nice, and it's the reason I’m even able to do this to my body, but ultimately, this is just something I started doing to help me keep going. I can’t give birth, but every time I gain a new family member, I reset my body back to the default and start over. Then I stay like this until the next one comes along. It gives me something to look forward to. Which feels more important than ever lately...”

She grinned and hiked her skirt to slip her gun back under her dress. “Plus it tends to make other androids hesitate before they try anything.”

“Which gives you an advantage.”

“Whatever works, right?”

With that, he surrendered the subject. They watched the hills for a while, but if anyone else was out there, they’d lost what little grit they had to begin with.

“When did you last gain a family member?” V asked.

The tinge of a smile touched her lips. “Bout fourteen years ago.”

He tried not to display his disgust but holding it in twisted his face into a mask of confusion just as raw. “I’m hard-pressed to imagine a human who would willingly submit to fourteen years in that state.”

“Know many of those, do you?” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “Well, if you were built by them and not us, maybe you did.”

She went quiet for several moments and stopped. Under a sky burning with molten chemical clouds, her eyes were dark and old and so excruciatingly clear that V glimpsed her as she was. A worn-out android standing in the last light of a devastated planet. She did not possess lines or wrinkles or dark circles that would ever show the truth of it. None of them did. None of them ever would. At least a thousand years of joys and sorrows watched him from the dusty but faultless face of a woman he might have taken to be no older than twenty-five if he didn't know better.

“I don’t know what I believe you are,” she said somberly. “But I know you looked ready to get mean when I asked about 49 and Fern. I recognize where you draw your line in the sand. But I also recognize that those two have a mission in their focus. I won’t ask what it is; I don’t need to know, and I think we’d both prefer I didn’t try to make it my business.” She closed in on him. Though she was scarcely any bigger than Fern, there was nothing diminutive about her or the pledge she made. “Just know _I_ will be the one who gets mean if it endangers even one of my people.”

Out of an inkling of respect, he held in the urge to let himself visibly relax. Her misguided insistence on understanding him as an equivalent ‘head of the family’ aside, knowing for a fact that she wouldn’t pry was one less thing to concern himself with.

“Our desire is to find what we’re looking for and go,” he offered. “That’s all I can promise you.”

“Not even going to _try_ to reassure me?”

“You’ve made clear that it is a waste of time to bother constructing a lie.”

She nodded and raised her brows in submission, stalking off ahead of him. “If what you’re looking for exists in the stacks… Seagrass can probably turn it up.”

It wasn’t out of kindness that she told him so and he knew it. But he accepted the advice with a grain of gratitude. There was one thing he could think of that a seasoned scavenger might be able to assist him with.


	6. Contrasting Components

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 333+: Being someone else, being yourself, being no one.

_Some places require becoming invisible to blend in. Others require personality. Figuring out which method to apply and when has been the foundation for every mission I have ever received, and this is no different._

_“Checkin’ in.”_

_It doesn’t matter that I wasn’t like this during orientation; it’s normal to be withdrawn when entering a new environment for the first time. This is a place of work for me now. So it’s important that I make it known I am nothing to be alarmed by; just the one who shows up at this time and says this thing and then moves on. The guards don’t pay me any mind. It’s not the point for them to notice or acknowledge me. The point is to build a recognizable routine because routine creates expectations and met expectations are non-threatening._

_The Isle of Man is not a lax place, so I have to create laxness however I can._

_For the same reason, I hum while I work. Just loud enough to be heard when I’m alone, and in occasional thoughtless strains when I’m with others. The workers are irate, so I make myself happy by comparison by just not being irritable. The workers are stressed, so I make myself relaxed simply by committing to work to the best of my ability and accepting that whatever happens, happens and whatever doesn’t, doesn’t._

_It’s a good mindset anyway. The place is not in the state of high repair one would hope a launch facility would be in, and despite a shared task list with maybe fifty others with Grade 2 industrial repairs clearance, the work never ends. The only ones busier than us are the harried team of twenty on Grade 1 repairs._

_Hectic as our work pace is, other androids struggle to make themselves work. I don’t know what the communications team and the administrative operators are responsible for, but they especially are sluggish and distracted in the halls. The heavy, stagnant air found in the stacks hangs here too, and it’s quieter than it should be despite the sleek, waiting shuttle standing at the ready out on the launch pad. It hadn’t been hyperbole from my lead at the Exchange that a bunch of the long-time personnel had just up and wandered off._

_The security teams are as much enforcers as defenders. Makeshift valves to stem the flow of hemorrhaging pipes. The few launch engineers I see slink around like they’re trying not to be seen, and I make myself look as friendly as I can without directly smiling at them._

_I’m sure there will be a chance to get one alone, but for now, it’s too early to do anything but work hard and keep my eyes open._

_“See you in 72.”_

* * *

Three days in that environment and I was always happy to leave. I didn’t let it show, not beyond a stretch and a sigh of relief as I stepped off the premises after a tedious battery of security scans. The face I wore inside had to persist at least until I was back at Sorting Yard B. Then I could look as annoyed as I wanted while I waited for the train back to the mainland.

I liked getting back to V. My outlook wasn’t as favorable on everything else.

Scanners had their kind of curiosity and we Executioners had ours. When I started digging for information on our hosts, I started with the most visible one. Wisteria. Opinions of her were harsh on the mainland, but the island androids regarded her with more compassion. Pity, even. The oldest models thought and hemmed and hawed and eventually all estimated she was from the 4th or 5th Machine War. If that was true, Wisteria could be anywhere between one and four thousand years old.

Maybe not the oldest android I’d ever met, but the oldest resistance android by a large margin. Whether she’d survived so long through prudence, brute strength, cowardice, or some combination of all three was unclear. Luck was also a possibility, but I didn’t believe anybody ground side had one hundred years’ worth of luck, much less one thousand.

I didn’t talk to anyone about Chum. We were approximately fourteen thousand kilometers from the site of the treaty signing, tension was high, and the battle of Normandy had left most of the sector’s long-time occupants especially unreceptive to being at peace with machines. If it got out that the fetishists were sheltering one, it was liable to get every last one of them marked for official decommission at best and shot down in the stacks at worst.

They were good to us. Good to V. That was enough for me to not want anything unfortunate to happen to them. But as I sagged down into a chair and laid my head down, I was glad I didn’t have to be around them too much.

“How was the Isle?” I grimaced against the wood. 49 could be oppressively positive, but Hibiscus’ personality was orders of magnitude more intense. Mostly because it wasn’t him trying to convince himself. He didn’t have to fake it and that made it so much more unbearable. “I’ve never known anybody who works there. Is it strict?”

“Yes,” I said. “And tiring.”

“Oh. Right, you’ve been there for days. Fixing stuff. Do you want a drink or some food or anything?”

“No.” Crestfallen silence answered me. Never in my life had I met an android who became so acutely disappointed that they couldn’t provide any comforts for me. As humans went that was probably a form of kindness, but that’s not what we were. That wasn’t how we were designed to act toward each other. It made my skin feel like it didn’t fit. “Look just… give that stuff to V instead.”

V shook his head absently, flipped a page of his book, and gave a faint “Maybe later.” When Hibiscus had tiptoed away to sulk, and I got the space to try and relax, V decided that was the time for one of his casual observations. “It is unlike you to be so cold with new company.”

“Unlike _you_ to get so comfortable so fast.”

“Is that how I look.”

“Sure is.”

He said nothing. Why should he, when we both knew he was right? Getting comfortable fast was my specialty and right now he was doing a better job at it than me. A fact that ignited into red hot shame in my midsection while the rest of my body evaporated around it.

Beneath the table, I was scratching at my gloves. I couldn’t help it. This place and the androids that lived in it made my plates itch. “Doesn’t it remind you of the shack…?”

He stopped in the middle of turning another page. My fists were already clenched tight by the time the smug look had gotten comfortable on his face. “Don’t tell me you’re uncomfortable with the level of _generosity_ you once tried so doggedly to provide.”

“I was a different person back then.” I had no intention of taking responsibility for the previous Fern’s behaviors. He knew that.

“So you were. This place is…more genuine than the shack.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? The fundamental components are no different. Fire, furniture, food, decorations; everything is the same.”

He gave an amused hum and went back to his book. “I could no more explain the difference to you than you could explain to 49 how your additional senses work.”

49 had tried to get me to explain my knack for sensing magic in a way he could understand half a dozen times during our travels. Even though he got a live demonstration while he was caught in my framework, he didn’t get the mechanism that allowed me to do that. Up until I crossed paths with V, I didn’t even know it was something I could do. I would occasionally get weird headaches in the field, but the resistance members never found anything and the H units back on the Bunker had always attributed it to my sloppy memory clears. I really had tried to give 49 a proper answer, but only because I had no idea how it worked or why I could do it.

If I knew, I wouldn’t have told him. Maybe V held his grudge in the same way. “How is 49?”

“Well, I suppose.” He tapped his finger against his cane and cocked his head. “His duties don’t seem to bother him. He spends most of his time when he returns talking with Hibiscus.”

“Bet you’re fond of that.”

“I am.” The corner of his mouth tilted too tamely to be a smirk. “It keeps them both occupied when Wisteria’s requests ensure I’m in no condition for anything but sleep.”

I raised my head and stared hard at him. “What does she have you do?”

“Accompany her, mostly. I thought she might be wary of leaving me here, but I’ve since noted a ‘pregnant’ android is rarely a welcome presence elsewhere. I suspect she is more interested in having my power at her disposal if her allies are not enough.” 

“Allies as in…”

“ _Extended family_ ,” he recited. “Other individuals from other groups like this one scattered across the sector. All of them at one time lived here.”

I’d assumed Wisteria just had some impressive funding or even more impressive skillsets to have all this going for so long without a catastrophic fuck up anywhere. If V was right, she had something much more important when it came to ground operations. Partners. In all kinds of places.

“I’m surprised you’d agree to play bodyguard.”

A mysterious smile ghosted across his lips. “A gracious host earns a gracious guest.”

Try as I might to decipher that, I couldn’t tell if he was cryptically scolding me or telling a joke I wasn’t in on.

* * *

_“Checkin’ in.”_

_Grade 2 mechanical maintenance is considered engineering support. We are a varied group owing to the different kinds of machinery present on the island. My experience is with engines and vehicular repairs, so I spend a lot of time on the outer hangars of the launch complex fixing trucks and handling maintenance of the specialty freight system that transports fuel, Horizon-bound materiel, and even construction components._

_The Grade 1 team is considered part of the launch team. They technically work in shifts like I do, but they are not permitted to leave the island. I hear whispers that when there were more of them, this wasn’t the case. The shriveling of their ranks has made it necessary that they are never far in case of unforeseen difficulties._

_Today, said difficulties are pressing enough that I am called directly to the launch pad with a few other members of support. We’re coached through minor problems so that they can focus on the major ones. The kind I hear being yelled out over my head among harshly lit platforms like battle cries bouncing off gleaming, marinized metal in a language I’m not pre-programmed with._

_System management androids are on-site, chattering busily in jargon well above my head. The console and server areas they primarily operate in are closed rooms that I am not cleared to enter, so it’s my first time seeing them in person._

_They are a subset of the launch engineers that have little in common with other androids at the facility. The rest of us came by our specialties as a matter of training, programming request, or naturally accumulated experience. The systems teams are more like YoRHa—or like Theta, Gamma, Rho, and her group. Specialty-built androids who manage the upkeep of the computers and software that run all the automated systems on the island._

_Which likely includes launch timing._

_Making contact with a systems android is as simple as asking one of the Grade 1’s if there are any other minor jobs I can take off their hands before I head back to the outer perimeters. I end up assigned to check a fueling cable while a systems android with a read-out hovers over me looking frustrated. The plug looks fine to me. I’ve never handled one this massive or with this kind of lock-in mechanism, but the manual is clear about how to achieve a secure seal and they’ve watched me follow it to the letter. But the red light blinking on their screen persists. That means a sensor problem, and that’s where my job ends and theirs begins._

_I make an offhand joke that maintaining all this seems like a big job for so few of them. That they’re probably run just as ragged as Grade 1._

_Every once in a while during my executions, the target would see me coming in for the kill. The response was always the same. They would freeze in place, confused but keenly aware of the imminent threat of death. By the time they snapped out of it, it was usually too late to run, pull their gun, or retreat into denial._

_That same kind of stillness settles over the systems android._

_“It’s fine.” A quiet, rushed, breathless whisper. Like I was choking them, and they were trying to babble out their last words before my grip grew too tight. “Everything’s fine as long as we keep working.”_

_They push past me, and I move on with a shrug._

_The mood swing is an unmissable sign that they have been to the adjustments office sometime in the last month or two. I don’t bring it up. There is a high probability that if I do, I will also end up paying adjustments an unwanted visit._

_As I hop a truck back to the main facility, I look again at all of those coveted specialty androids. Without them, this entire facility would fail, and they were entirely unsupervised. Every last one._

_For the remaining hours, I mind my business. I complete my tasks. I refuse to be anxious. I hum._

_With clouds gathering thick above the facility, I say the same thing as always._

_“See you in 72.”_

* * *

“Heard you wanted to learn how to fish.”

I let my eyes drift shut for one peaceful moment. Hibiscus wasn’t there, but how stupid of me to have assumed that meant I’d be left alone today. I consoled myself that at least Pearl sounded about as enthused as I did that he was interacting with me.

“Who told you that?”

“The small one.” He stood up from where he was polishing a tap already so clean I could nearly make out my reflection in it from across the room. “Whenever you’re ready.”

_No time like the present then._ At least this promised to not be a waste of my time.

Pearl dropped us down to a deeper level of the sewer of made of uneven cobblestones worn smooth by trickling water. All the moisture I’d been expecting from the sewer above settled there like thick fog. Luminescent slime hung from the ceiling and drooped between stalactites like strange beaded necklaces and our boots squelched in piles of god only knew what as we made our way to a side tunnel where the brickwork has fallen apart. He lit a single dim lantern that sat in a corner. It wasn’t much light, but enough for me to make out the edge of a listless underground river that disappeared into the tunnels.

Not quite as serene as the underground pool back in the city, but it was also a lot smaller and there were no other entrances or exits that I could see. Private, in other words. I made a note of the place on my internal map.

“Here.” Pearl handed me a pole that really wasn’t any more complicated than the one 49 had tried to make. He showed me how to tie the line along the pole so the tension wasn’t all at the end and put something squiggly that might or might not have been still alive on the hook, and the rest, apparently, was the wait.

“Well shit,” I marveled. “It really _is_ that simple.”

“Mmhm.” What a thrilling response.

Honestly, I enjoyed Pearl’s company in that same way I’d enjoyed Gamma’s. He was blunt but not antagonistic about how much he didn’t like me. He didn’t really like any of us; I was just the only one he didn’t make an effort for, to no surprise of mine. V was visibly built different and ‘acted’ human, while 49 was emotional, happy to experiment, and seemed to be the only person in the last twenty years who could keep up with Hibiscus. I could’ve been any old ordinary android who just walked in out of the stacks—the strangest thing about me was the company I kept.

We weren’t all that different in that regard. Pearl’s profile was a lot lower than Wisteria’s so there wasn’t much to know about him. Dropped in between the 80th and 90th descent and survived long enough to make Grade 2 personnel repairs. Mean as a wasp.

That was all anybody had to say. He was nobody special.

The line tugged sharply in my hand. I instinctively snatched back while Pearl barked that I’d snap the line if I wasn’t careful. A mud-colored, two-headed fish the length of my arm writhed at the water’s edge. I wasn’t used to catching fish that big. Not without Pod to keep it under control. Instinctively, I closed the distance and pulled the thrashing, slippering body in against me so I wouldn’t lose it. A knife dead center between the head and the frantic movement stopped.

Once I was certain it wasn’t going to spring any surprise twitched on me, I knelt to start cutting, but Pearl caught me by the wrist.

“I handle the food.”

“I’ve noticed. But this isn’t the first time I’ve done this part. I know what I’m doing.”

“Let me be clearer:” he rumbled. “I’m the _only_ one who handles the food.”

I sighed and yanked my wrist free. Let him do it if he felt so strongly about it. I didn’t like the stink that came with handling fish anyway. “You like this with your buddies too or is it just me?”

“Maman’s too wild, Chum would contaminate the beer, Seagrass doesn’t like holding weapons and Seaglass…” A name he spoke with such a jarring lack of grumpiness that it was nearly soft in my ear. “Well, she’s only reliable for about three things when she’s around at all.”

“What about Hibiscus?”

He looked at me like I’d just suggested pouring animal piss into his filters. “Hibiscus is _filthy._ ”

“Right… As opposed to you, the most unnaturally clean android I have ever seen.” His clothes were dusty as anybody’s, but his body was immaculate from his carefully polished paneling to teeth bleached so white they made his optic lights look dim by comparison. He always kept his hood down, but I bet his hair was well-kept too. “Don’t quite see how a neat freak would be the one to handle this stuff. Kind of a dirty process.”

“All the better to have ‘a neat freak’ to make the process as clean as possible then, isn’t it.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Or with the way he really did make gutting that ugly, slimy, thick-whiskered thing into an art form. “…I bet you were a great field repairs unit.”

I didn’t mean it any kind of way and I wasn’t trying to test his boundaries. It hadn’t crossed my mind there were any there to test, but the way his face tightened told me I’d crossed an invisible line.

He took a deep breath that seemed to swell him to twice his size. I thought he was going to shout, but he ran a shaking hand, fish offal and all, over his face and let it out in weak, wheezy cackle. Rage was not the reason for the hoarseness it left behind.

“Mind your own fucking business.”

That was the sound of grief.

* * *

My next check-in was interrupted by the sky falling. At the window of the derelict factory where I surfaced, I strained my visual processors to the limit and could still barely see more than ten meters in front of me. The clouds were dull past the deep gray static of heavy rain.

To think the night kingdom would be even darker than this... Shuddering, I withdrew into my cloak.

The atmospheric acid index was high enough I could taste bitterness in the ambient moisture every time I breathed. There would be no expectation of regular operations with the weather this bad, not on the Isle of Man or anywhere. The operators would have the Sector H train safely nested in one of the tunnels or under one of the roofed platforms off the mainland until this passed. I didn’t relish it, but I took a page out of their book and returned underground to V and Pearl and Wisteria.

Hibiscus was the first to be chased back in by the weather. He surprised me by not stopping to discuss it. He practically jumped out of his clothes and disappeared into a side room. When he came back, he was in the rattiest shirt I had ever seen, some ancient moth-bitten thing way too big for him with buttons that had been badly replaced with bits of plastic.

“What the hell are you wearing?”

He beamed and pulled it taut to better show it off. “It’s called a sweater. Humans wore them to make themselves sweat.”In the corner of my eye, V suddenly looked extremely interested in the opposite side of the room. I wondered if he realized his dimples were giving him away.

49 arrived a little after, like a soggy length of driftwood chucked ashore by a rough tide. Clicking my teeth, I tugged off my cloak and threw it over his head. Acid rain wouldn’t do androids significant harm provided we weren’t out bathing in it, but that didn’t mean it was a pleasant experience to get drenched in it.

“Wipe your eyes, idiot. Why the hell didn’t you take cover?”

“I was past the stacks. Out on an assignment to assess a part,” he explained, rubbing clumsily at his face. Oily, yellowish flush tears beaded in his eyes and smeared across his cheeks. “By the time I made it to cover I was already soaked, and I didn’t know when it would let up, so I figured it would be better to just come back.”

Hibiscus tugged the shirt off his back with no hesitation and handed it to 49. An act that took even the scanner by surprise. “Take it,” he urged. “I’m already dry, and we’ve got more.”

49 nodded a bit sluggishly. Hibiscus was sometimes too much even for him, but he got the point well enough to peel everything off and replace it with the sweater. It looked just as ridiculous on him as it did on Hibiscus.

An android I’d dismissed as Seagrass skulking around bent to collect the piles of wet clothes. Visually, she was identical. The same willowy shape padding around on impossibly light feet like a living shadow. Same complete silence filled by hand signals. Same dark complexion and odd stare. But something was off.

49 must have noticed it too. He was giving her a puzzled look. “Is that Seaglass?”

Hibiscus smiled mildly. “It is.”

I didn’t know anything about this one other than Pearl spoke of her gently. I didn’t know about Sea _grass_ either. As far as the outside was concerned, she was just some scavenger that showed up in the stacks sometimes. It wasn’t clear anyone even knew she was part of Maman’s group.

“Twin models?” I guessed.

“Nope.” Another uncharacteristically short answer.

Not hopping at the chance to over-explain wasn’t like Hibiscus. Seaglass and Seaglass were identical, but Hibiscus would just say ‘I can’t tell you’ rather than lie to a guest. Whatever the story was, he knew it and most likely he considered it a matter of her (or their) privacy. Another principle of human behavior he treated like a sacred doctrine.

That, I didn’t mind. It meant I could count on him to keep a secret if it became necessary.

Seaglass took clothes from everyone, even if they hadn’t been out in the rain. Which included V and me. When V resisted, she made an extremely easy to understand gesture specifying that we stank.

I laughed, more at V’s irked expression than anything else. I had warned him this might happen. Between the animal-ish human odor in his clothes and the days-old stench of sewer fish in mine, there really wasn’t much of a way to say no. He, of course, had a second standard-issue resistance shirt to hide in. I had to make do with what I was given—another too-big sweater with a hideous design on it. 

“Where the hell do you even get these…?”

“Near Sorting Yard A,” said 49. “There’s a marketplace where they sell old paraphernalia that doesn’t have any practical uses. The building with the old belltower.”

“Oh, you’ve been to that shop huh? Their selection is _okay_ ,” Hibiscus drawled, a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye. “But you’ve gotta get off the main street if you really wanna find the good stuff.”

The wistful shadows the fire cast on 49’s face disappeared before I could finish wondering where they’d come from. Lost to a sudden keen interest in what Hibiscus was saying. “There’s better ones?”

“Way better, way better! Don’t buy artifacts around the terminal. Once every five years you’ll luck up and get something worth the cost, but if you’re willing to go out of the way there are plenty of specialists who handle that stuff like proper artifacts.”

49 leaned in with a grave whisper. “Are they imitators too?”

“Not most of them, no. Just historical types; HHRMO channels, ex-archaeologists, that kind of thing. I’ll show you around when the weather’s nice! Until then…” He plopped down across from the scanner and dropped two beers down between them with a bright grin and rolled up his sleeves. “Wanna learn a hand game?”

“Hand game…? Is that like a physical dexterity test?”

“No, it’s actually fun.” He pushed out a chair beside them with his foot. “Maman, come sing the song?”

She hoisted herself over and took the seat. And the beer nearest 49, to my private relief.

It started off so simple even I was unimpressed. But every time Wisteria repeated the song, it got faster, and some new layer of motions was added according to the timing of the words. Half beats, then thirds, then fifths, then eighths, each with their own action that was supposed to take place at its own location between them in perfect synchronicity. Six repetitions in, geometric patterns started to emerge naturally from the movements of their arms and I could see 49 struggling to keep it all in order. And he looked incredibly engaged.

A scanner was happiest when they weren’t bored, and this posed as much of a challenge to his memory-action coordination as did his motor control.

_“Hello, operator. Please give me number nine. If you disconnect me, I’ll kick you from—"_

I peered suspiciously at V. “Humans definitely couldn’t have kept up with that, right?” 

“Probably not,” he said. His voice was heavy but placid. Like a stone at the bottom of a lake. “But none here were born as humans.”

The priority of my sensory processing shifted. Splashing and scrubbing and scrape of a tinny barrel reached me from a room away where Pearl was helping with the wash. Whispery laughter that must’ve come from Seagrass, the crackle of the fire and the clinking of glass, and the chaotic clap of Hibiscus’ hands against 49’s merged into a strange harmony. All overlaid by the pitch of Wisteria’s voice growing a little higher and a little more laced with barely suppressed laughter every time she repeated the short series of rhymes.

_“Dark is like a movie. A movie’s like a show. A show is like a TV screen. And that is all I know!”_

Déjà vu washed over me in a subtle wave of disorientation.

I’d had moments like this before. I’d been part of moments like this before. I knew this dance, but no one in this room was my partner and that made my nerves buzz with new, awful tension. Like any minute the order was going to come down and surprise me even though the Bunker was just a bunch of space junk and burnt metal now.

I understood then what V meant when he said this place was too genuine to be the shack. I couldn’t explain it back to myself in words that made sense, but it wasn’t unsettling because of superficial similarities. Maman and the rest weren’t playing pretend to have a human family. They wanted to find the best way to treat _each other_ as family. All of this was just them trying on humanity’s left behind things amongst themselves to figure out what made them happiest.

For me, it was too brazen to pretend at being human in front of an actual human. Too bold to sift through humankind’s grave and take whatever might have value. Despite being gutturally self-conscious when V pointed out what a poor job I was doing at mixing in with this group, I arrived an important discovery:

I really didn’t want to.

* * *

_“Checkin’ in.”_

_I say as much, but I’m paid even less attention than usual. The facility is abuzz with the kind of energy I’d expected it to have the first time I entered. Bulbs I had assumed were emergency lights strobe slowly in bright orange. Floodlights have been turned on all over the launch complex. I scroll through my task list and it's empty._

_Save for a countdown._

_“Grade 2?” someone barks at me. I nod, quick but confused, and they grab my arm and point me down the hall. “Acoustic buffering check.”_

_“But I’m only specialized for—”_

_“Doesn’t matter. You’ll get a manual. Move, we’re on the clock.”_

_We’re always on the clock, but I know that isn’t what he means. At the end of the countdown that has erased my task list, the rocket that’s been sitting peacefully on the launch pad will leave the complex._

_I submit to the rush of every job I’m asked to do, in part to give my mind room to race. The timing is too soon. Ideally, we would’ve infiltrated in time for 49 to be on this launch. When will the next one be? A rocket can’t be an easy thing to construct. Or can it? I don’t know. I strain for information that will tell me that this window isn’t closing for months, but all I hear is useless noise in words that are too far above my sphere of knowledge to help me. The chatter of the communications team alone is a sea of excess information about telemetry and orbital speed and interception as they organize with Horizon-1._

_“ALL PERSONNEL CLEAR THE LAUNCHPAD,” an officious, inescapably loud broadcast announces. “ALL FIRING ROOM PERSONNEL STAND BY. ALL PERSONNEL CLEAR THE LAUNCHPAD AND WITHDRAW TO THE SAFETY ZONE IN THE NORTHERN WING.”_

_The countdown ends. I stand in the northern wing in the company of two hundred other androids. Safe behind glass that vibrates with the force and sound generated by the distant engine. Liftoff is smooth. Together, all of us who are not required for the rest of this process watch the rocket become a tiny comet at the head of a long, billowing tail of smoke. There is no celebratory cheer, only weary, gloomy silence._

_If the war were still on-going, this would be routine. A common, everyday success that was expected of the facility. Even I might give myself a moment to be amazed. But the war is over, and the question is as obvious as the empty space the rocket left behind._

_What are we doing this for?_

_Who are we **continuing** to do this for?_

_My shoulders sag with weight that has nothing to do with either of those questions. My processing is taxed to shit and I can’t think anymore, so I retreat into my working persona’s ‘whatever happens, happens’ mindset. It helps a little. Maybe if we have to be here for another few months, there’ll be time to dig up information about where in the night kingdom V is supposed to be going._

_Something taps my arm. A bottle. In the too-tight grip of an android with black diamond buttons lining the sides of her skirt._

_“Good… good job out there!”_

_Any wariness I might have had dissolves as I try not to laugh. There’s not much that’s funnier to me than shy types trying to be daring. Not much that are easier to mirror either. I take the bottle with a clumsy, humble ‘thank you’. It’s filtration fluid—not easy to come by out here. And given her clean attire and the sleekly done braid hanging over her shoulder, probably not something she would need or have lying around._

_I shove it into my pockets along with my nervously clenched hands. “Guess we get back to work now, don’t we?”_

_“Ah, no. Until the payload gets to Horizon and the retrieval signals activate, there won’t be new assignments. You’re… free to leave early.”_

_“Retrieval signals…?” My eyes widen. “It’s re-usable?”_

_“Yeah. Most delivery rockets are. You know administration. Always looking for resource efficiency.” She laughs a little timidly. “You uh, must be a wander-in?”_

_“I am.” My theoretical timeline for the next launch is scrambled once again. It’s not a huge rocket. It probably—no, leave thoughts like that up to the scanner. That’s not my job. My job is to shift my weight and cross my arms loosely over my stomach. “Name’s Fern. Grade 2 maintenance. Or, engineering support I guess.”_

_“I know. Well, not your name. Just that you’re the one who’s always humming.” She talks a little faster every time she completes a sentence. A reliable tell of the type who misspeaks, over explains the mistake, and usually ends up misspeaking again in the process. “Comms support, Grade 1.”_

_That position has no actionable meaning to me, but a Grade 1 anything is a great start. The odds that she either is part of the launch team or has access to them are high. Even better, no one will care if she talks to me. Communications units are like O-types, chatty by nature._

_“I guess if there’s nothing better to do, I can head back then.”_

_“Oh. Yeah.”_

_“…You wanna walk with me?”_

_She does a bad job of not looking too eager but walks beside me at a measured, polite distance without talking. She’s recent. I don’t know how recent, but she’s probably the same as me, only 3 or 4 years old. If she’s been here in comms all her life, it’s likely she’s even more sheltered than 49._

_“Wonder when the next launch’ll be…” I say absently as I stare out at the empty launch pad. “I got to do some fuel line work with the Grade 1’s in maintenance. It was interesting to see the rocket so close.”_

_“Who knows... I don’t think even the launch director knows until the countdown.” Meaning it’s automated. Out of android hands. I won’t be able to overhear it or otherwise rustle the information out of someone. We know when it’s time for us to know. But that doesn’t mean it’s hopeless. “Are you… trying to get to Grade 1?”_

_“Me? No, no, I’m way too lazy to be a Grade 1.”_

_“That’s not true, you work really hard!” In other words, she was one of the slackers. If she had the time to watch me, it was time not spent on her tasks._

_We come to the long battery of safety scans that separate the facility from the undersea line. The guards are there, like always._

_“See you—"_

_“—in 72,” she completes, fiddling with one of the black buttons that decorate her skirt. “That’s—you always say that, right?”_

_It’s a straight tunnel, and I’m testy about being followed. There’s no way she would have gotten close enough to hear me say that without me noticing her… But she is a Grade 1 comms unit. And there are intercoms everywhere._

_She knew me as the one who hummed. By the sound of my routines._

_“I don’t know how busy we get with the retrieval and all but… maybe we can meet in the north wing at 0300 whenever we have time?” I offer an embarrassed smile as I check my internal clock to be sure I’m not missing the train. “Just to talk. If you want to.”_

_“I want to!” she says a little too excitedly before she catches herself. “Ahem. Right. 0300 hours. See you in 72.”_

_“See you in 72.”_

_She skips off with a triumphant buzzing that isn’t quite a hum and I let a giddy smile surface on my face. The guards look disgusted, but I don’t care. I’m genuinely pleased as could be._

_I love being ahead of schedule._


	7. E/Spionage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 350: Unintended applications of an accidental discovery, civil unrest in paradise, and the dangers of a single scanner unit in a digital age.

The thin circle of light from the lantern out in the main passage didn’t permeate more than a meter into the dark. 49 had thought the underground pool back in the city ruins was weirdly serene, but there was nothing comforting about this place. The water didn’t ripple quite the way he thought it should, the fishing hook kept bobbing back to the surface every now and again, and all the walls had a shiny, gelatinous coat of moisture. And Fern was right: it didn’t echo down there. Even though it _should_ have.

“So you’re not at the warehouses as often as we thought?” she asked.

“No. Because of the fighting, every time there’s a potentially high-quality item that might not be able to be transported discretely it has to get checked out first. If what I find is good, the Army handles collection, but it’s almost always out in the middle of nowhere...”

“And it got you soaked.”

49 grumbled an affirmation and scratched at his knees. Hibiscus had not let 49 get back into his clothes without taking a nanomachine supplement. The acidic rain was known to corrode them, which would leave any normal android susceptible to minor injuries, but all the supplement did was leave 49 oversaturated. The unusual increase in tactile noise kept tripping his nerve sensors and making him fidget. Fern’s fishing efforts were probably taking so long because he couldn’t keep still.

“I did manage to get at the manifest records. There were shipments to the Night Kingdom out from the Exchange as recently as March.”

“More recent than I thought,” said Fern, re-adjusting the fishing pole. “Any idea what they were delivering?”

“High-intensity lighting hardware.” Fern hissed an exasperated laugh. 49 had done the same thing when he found out. The question was natural, but the answer was so obvious it felt stupid to have asked in the first place. “The salvaged YoRHa parts the HHRMO is calling for are being sent out there too.”

“Not by the Exchange though. So Horizon-1.”

“Mhm…” Apprehension that he couldn’t justify settled on him like the slime on the walls. The same feeling he had every time he’d held this fact in mind without having any clue as to the ‘why’ of it. “Then they get transferred to satellite Lizhin.”

“I don’t suppose 1S left you a handy guide what sector Lizhin operates over.”

“All the records say Lizhin handled all descents for the northern hemisphere on that side until androids pulled back from it. I don’t even think the Night Kingdom has sectors. It could be anywhere.”

“Damn.” She sagged and let her head loll back. “I was hoping that’d give us a clue where the hell he’s supposed to be going once we get over there.”

Hunting information that was thousands of years old and poorly documented to begin with was bound to turn up a lot of dead ends like that. The Gestalt Project was different. It was the job of androids to see that project to fruition at one point, so it had been important that they keep plenty of documentation that might be recovered. Humans had been the ones to misplace the red dragon. That androids might have re-discovered it didn’t necessarily mean they kept any records about it.

“I wonder what Lizhin’s been doing out there this whole time…”

V’s voice drifted out of the dark from behind them. “If there are dragon weapons in the kingdom of night, someone must command them.”

49 shuddered and scratched at the intensifying prickle along his arms. A lone satellite waging war with secret weapons on the dark side of the Earth where no one knew what they were doing was all too easy to imagine. “What about you?” he said to Fern, eager to move to a different topic. “I saw the launch the other day. Did you find out anything we can use?”

“I’ll let you be the one to tell me.”

Half-answers like that weren’t like Fern, but the more she described her findings, the more 49 understood why she hadn’t given him a definitive yes or no. The rocket was reusable, but she had no idea what kind of time reconstruction might take. The launch was announced by a three-day timer, but nobody she had access to would know where the invisible pre-countdown started. The launch engineers weren’t hard to find, but they’d been through adjustment and any number of nasty things might happen if she tried to work them and said the wrong thing.

“I made a connection with a Grade 1 comms android,” she finished, with a pleased but unpleasant smile. “I’ll see about getting more information out of her.”

49 barely heard her. He leaned his chin against the back of his fist, physically still while his mind accelerated. From the churning sea of intel, disparate elements bonded together to form the single perfect molecule of an idea.

“How good are comms at the facility? Strong? Stable? They have to be to communicate with Horizon-1 on a regular basis, and it’s fairly close to the planet as orbiting satellites go so the signal could be half of what it was on the Bunker and…” Fern was staring at him. With an effort of constraint, he slowed himself down. “There’s a strong, stable communications network on the Isle of Man, right?”

“Yes,” she said suspiciously. “Comms are good.”

“Horizon-1 is a low-orbit satellite. So the range is at least 200 kilometers.”

“Safely assumable.”

“And a program handles the launch date. Meaning… I can manipulate it if I can get to it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Come back down to reality with the rest of us, please. You can’t just walk in there.”

“No.” He could barely feel the itchy waves of too many nanomachines scuttling on his skin. Whether the idea could become a real plan or not hinged here. On her. “But you can.”

“Yeah, but how does that—” Sudden and heavy stole over them as she caught up. Lingered for piling minutes as she processed, only to be torn by the loud creak of leather and metal as her grip tightened on the pole.

“Fern…” His voice trembled. He knew he was asking a lot, but it could work. It _would_ work. “Just hear me out.”

She shoved the pole at him, very nearly hitting him in the face with it—and 49 didn’t miss what an act of restraint it was on her part that it hadn’t—and climbed to her feet. Pacing, arms clenched tight around her and making muffled sounds that might have been disbelieving laughter or a seething, disgusted hiss.

“I’m not going to mess with anything this time,” 49 swore.

Fern stopped pacing. He could barely make out more than her optic lights, rings of white in the dark that would have burned him alive on the spot if they could.

49 wilted. The last time had been an accident that neither one of them had even known was possible, in a situation she had put them in with the intent to be destroyed. And he had ruined that for her. Quiet as she kept it, that grudge wasn’t dead.

“I wouldn’t ask if I thought there was a better way…”

Between them, V’s voice again wafted out of the dark. The dull gleam of light on the cane’s edge was easier to see than where the rest of him sat out of the already meager light. “What are you proposing?”

“A partial…” 49 trailed off in search of a word that wouldn’t make the situation worse.

“ **Hijack** ,” Fern completed for him. “A partial hijack. Just like back at the castle.”

“I wouldn’t need control of any of your systems. I’d just be a passenger this time, totally non-interfering, and then once I make the next hack-in target, I’m gone. You don’t have to blow your cover, and if comms are really that strong, I’ll be able to get back to my body no problem whether you’re there or not.”

“So,” V continued. “Fern behaves as usual and she only has to meet with another android?”

“No, another android would be a bad target. The neural networking system used by non-YoRHa is probably navigable, but the framework is…” Not based on machines. “It isn’t the same. Plus, they’d be non-cooperative, and I’d probably get lost or cause unnecessary damage if I tried to seize any kind of control. Something connected to the Isle’s local network would be the ideal target.”

“And you,” he tilted his head toward Fern. “Do not approve of this method.”

“Did you approve when you had all that maso fucking around in your body?”

A short huff of a laugh answered, surprising them both. “If it were me, I might think on ways to make use of that unpleasant power, rather than the ways it would use me.” He shrugged. “But the task of convincing you is his, as the decision to be convinced or not is yours.”

Her gaze shifted to 49. He met it without jumping to over-explain, quiet in the full and serious knowledge of the request he was making. If they did this, they would both be going into it willingly, but she was the one who had to put herself at risk. The circumstances were different this time. He wasn’t a confused prisoner, and she wasn’t his kidnapper. Control of her body was in question. Her hacking defenses weren’t strong enough to stop him any more than his physical capabilities would have been enough to stop her from killing him if she put her mind to it.

The sanctity of her memories was similarly at stake. He was still a scanner. Even though he couldn’t have forgiven anyone doing the same to him, it was in his design to get bored and curious and sometimes go where he shouldn’t, and they both knew it.

“You can say no, Fern. We’d just have to figure it out the long way.”

She took a long breath that cycled in and in and in without an exhale. “The long way is a luxury and we’re relying on too many of those already.”

“Okay. I’ll stay on the surface of your framework. Under whatever conditions you want to create.”

“You sure will.” She squatted down and gripped him by his collar, forcing them to meet eye-to-eye. “Because if you do otherwise, you’ll be figuring out how to get to the moon by yourself.”

He let his nod be as solemn as his voice. “Understood.”

“Good.” She dropped him. “Let’s go then. We should get to work on setting up.”

“Here? Right now?”

“We’ve only got fifty hours before I have to go back, and this is about as much privacy as we’re gonna get. So, yes, 49.” She took the pole from him and tossed it into V’s lap. “Right now.”

* * *

Fern’s framework was a comfortable and familiar white.

“You have one job: Do not, under any circumstances, let anything happen to his body. Don’t let anybody touch it. Don’t let anybody disturb it. The last thing I want is to have to carry around this bastard’s disembodied consciousness in a second time because someone tried to force boot him and reset his connection.”

She really didn’t have to be like that, but he had the sense to not try and say so.

V’s voice echoed through her aural systems. Annoyed and a little harried. “You think I would even know where to begin—”

“Just handle surface inspection. Range of motion, things like that. 49? Get in position and give me the signal.”

Obediently, he spun the triangular shape of his mobile consciousness core toward the custom access port. Fern’s sight became his own. She was staring at his body, and at V sitting beside it with a skeptical look on his face. Probably wondering how he was supposed to pretend to do repairs for three days. Her internal map sat faded in the bottom left of her visual field.

He pinged it twice.

She took a quick breath and ambled out through the labyrinthine halls. 49 presumed she would go straight for her destination, but she headed for the gathering room first. Wisteria was there. Fern approached her directly, hiking her thumb at Chum.

“You mind if I take a few beers with me?”

Wisteria looked nearly as caught off guard by the request as 49. “You? To work?”

“There’s someone I want to have a drink with over on the Isle.” Her view shifted down as she reached into her pockets, and she tossed Wisteria a small bottle. “Trade you.”

Wisteria held the bottle up, staring hard at the clear liquid swilling inside. Filtration fluid, 49 realized. After a few moments, she pocketed it. “Take what you need.” Fern latched onto four bottles. While she was securing them in her bag for the journey, Wisteria added in a faux-cheerful drawl: “If you get yourself in trouble, don’t make this the place you run back to.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Fern answered, in a tone so playful it might have been a confession or a joke.

Once they were alone in the open wilderness between the stacks and the mainland with three hours to pass on foot, he let his curiosity out just a little.

_[Why Four Bottles]_

Instant and sharp came her reply: “No talking.”

It was probably for the best that he couldn’t do more than think about sighing.

He’d known the journey to Sorting Yard B would be long, but not how incredibly boring it would be to make the trip as Fern’s stowaway. She either picked one thing to stare at and then stared at it until it was time to move or she closed her eyes.

Occasionally she’d let her attention wander, but it was usually to something mundane. Other passengers who looked unusual but were harmless at the mainland. Someone coming even closer than usual to being hit by a bus at Sorting Yard A. A train operator who could not possibly have found a more apathetic arrangement of his features enduring another argument about freight restrictions. She actually laughed at that one. Inconspicuously, but with his limited access to her sensory cortex, there wasn’t much of a way for her to hide it from him.

That was the most excitement 49 until she descended from the Sorting Yard B platform. She passed through the rows and rows of warehouses to a ruler-straight road that ended in an elevator embedded into the cliff face. An android stood to one side of it, silver-clad and heavily armed. Fern waved haphazardly. Less to greet and more to signal an approach, or so he assumed by the similarly loose nod she received back.

A clean steel interior received them and the elevator lowered Fern down without any of the metallic clangs or grinding he was used to. At the bottom, a closed platform that could’ve been anywhere awaited them. A group of other androids waited, maybe ten or fifteen. One of them nodded at Fern, and she waved at them too, with lazy, cordial recognition. But they didn’t talk. Conversation wasn’t how this group passed the time, though 49 picked up a snatch of someone wondering aloud if the retrieval team had any trouble recovering the rocket’s segments.

The train that carried them from the central H island to the Isle of Man was sleek and new and small with no windows, no sign of an operator, and no attendant. When Fern deboarded, it was into a disarmingly plain lobby.

Two silver-clad army androids stood at the only way out—a long, harshly lit hallway. The hum of a scanning mechanism embedded into the walls was almost imperceptible beneath the buzz of fluorescent lighting.

“Checkin’ in.”

An arm barred Fern’s path. 49 panicked, but she moseyed out of the way of the other androids without a care, and they filed by her with just as much disinterest. “Never seen you carry anything in before,” said the guard.

“Never had anything to carry.”

The female model in the duo rolled her eyes, and the male gestured for her to open the bag. Neither one of them thought of Fern as a threat and that made 49 more nervous for their sake than Fern’s. She unzipped her bag with the unbothered demeanor of the genuinely innocent. Like 49 wasn’t with her at all.

“It’s beer,” she said, holding out one of the bottles.

The female unit pulled off the seal, shared a sip with her counterpart, and they both nodded and spat it out onto the tracks. “Clear. But I hope you weren’t intending to drink all this while you’re supposed to be working.”

“No, ma’am.”

“And you know loitering more than thirty minutes post-shift isn’t allowed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then why do you have so many?”

“I brought enough for us all. You two, me, and my new friend.”

“Yeah, yeah, 0300…” the male unit grunted with annoyance. “You recent models are always pushing it.”

“But since you were so thoughtful…” The female unit reached into the back and pulled two more of the beers free. “We’ll take our two and you’re free to go.”

Fern glanced at the one bottle she was left, and up to the male unit. He waved the already open bottle with a smile. “On the off chance you’re trying to make trouble, better we only leave you with one.”

His expression was like the ones 49 always saw at the warehouses. Cheerful in form, far from it in fact.

Fern shrugged like it couldn’t be helped and zipped up her bag without another word. He wondered if she had planned for it to go that way or not. Her cheery humming, which persisted on and off for the next several hours, suggested that nothing was amiss.

Odd though. He'd never heard her hum before.

The facility wasn’t exciting but presented more than enough information to keep him occupied while she waited for 0300. Fern obliged him by looking around, though only when she was traveling from one task to the other. Inside the facility, it didn’t do him much good, but when she got to cross through the inner circle, he tracked every bit of information he could.

The full hexagonal structure of the facility, the motion lights blinking on and off around her, the floodlights around the launch pad that rendered it impossible to approach without being seen, and the guards standing at attention nearly everywhere. Those worried him most. Their numbers had clearly suffered just like the other kinds of staff on the premises, but after hours of back and forth, he couldn’t identify a single moment where she wasn’t a clear shot for at least two of them.

He was so caught in his internal analysis, he didn’t notice at all that Fern missed her meeting time. She arrived an hour too late, jogging to the northwest wing and looking around with frantic then hopeless energy.

“Damn it…” The pronounced sulkiness would've set 49's teeth on edge if he had any. “I was too late…”

_[You Had Plenty Of Time]_

She checked her task list, chose another job, and jogged off to do it. He assumed she was ignoring him until a low and threatening and through her speakers came the same warning as before:

**“No. _Talking_.”**

_Fine, fine…_

He couldn’t run any dense routines with only his mobile consciousness core and it would take access to his physical hardware to calculate any meaningful entry (or escape) vectors, so he focused on compositing a comprehensive map from Fern’s visual data. The rocket launched on a south-facing arc so it lined up with Horizon-1’s transit path. That put the safety zone to the north, where most of the island’s heavy machinery and support structures were. Radio towers and satellite dishes and the massive freight transport that chugged to carry their equally large payloads to the launch pad.

Maybe that could be how he snuck on…

Once more, 0300 approached, and once more she missed it, arriving at the north wing thirty minutes late this time. The comms unit was still there. 49 hadn’t come with expectations, but somehow, he wasn’t expecting her to look the way she did. Plain silver coat and a plain silver skirt cut to the same moderate length as her dark brown hair. Even the black diamonds marking her as an army unit seemed innocuous. She had an unguarded sort of face and looked so excited to see Fern trotting up to the bay windows that 49 couldn’t help feeling bad for her.

“I’m so sorry!” Fern blurted. “All my jobs are unfamiliar now, so it’s hard to get them done in time.”

“It’s fine, you don’t need to rush just to see me. Not like I’m going anywhere. And working hard is good!”

Fern shoved her hands in her pockets. Tactile feedback suggested she was clenching and unclenching them. Was that a real nervous habit or a faked one? “You weren’t waiting here this whole time, were you?”

Before the comms unit could answer, a readout opened and buzzed noisily at her, signifying she was past due for a task. She slapped at it ineffectually, and the two of them stood in silence so self-conscious that 49 desperately wanted to back off the access port just so he wouldn’t have to be a part of it.

“I don’t want you to get in trouble,” Fern finally suggested. “You should take care of that.”

“But I haven’t even had a chance to talk to you...”

“Yeah, but that’s my fault.”

“It’s alright, I can tell you’ve been really looking forward to it. I-I think.” She smiled crookedly. “You’ve been humming a lot more than usual.”

“Ah-ha, I _thought_ that’s how you knew me.” Fern leaned in until 49 could make out her accusatory squint in the reflection off the comms unit’s eyes. “You overheard I brought a gift for you, didn’t you?”

“No-no-no, well, yes, actually maybe just a little… but I promise I have no idea what it is! I’ve never had beer before!”

“Yeah?” Fern rubbed at her chin and stood straight. “Well, let’s both make sure we’re here on time tomorrow. I don’t want to have to wait another three days to give it to you. Especially since it’s hard to get it past those assholes at the entry hall.”

“Oh…okay!”

The task alarm blared again, and the comms unit ran to take care of it rather than stay and be embarrassed by it a second time. Fern stalked off in the opposite direction, humming as always.

It was on purpose. Everything she did in this place, from her absent habits to her routines was all a careful act. He could manipulate himself to look harmless in front of authority or people he needed things from. And V could tell a lie and keep a secret boldly while being smug about it the entire time. But this was not the same thing. This wasn’t even the same as how casually she mingled with the little pockets of androids they encountered over the summer. It wasn’t programming either, because 2B had never been this good. The façade always broke down. In a matter of minutes by the time she was on his last few lives, but it hadn’t taken all that long before that either.

_How many times have you done this…?_

Within her memories, he could easily find the answer, but he kept his attention on the mission at hand. They were too close for him to mess this up now.

On this last day, Fern chose and completed her jobs with merciless efficiency and arrived at the north wing five minutes ahead of time. By now, 49 had no doubt she had been capable of doing it that way from the first day.

The comms unit arrived right on time and grinned when she saw Fern waiting.

He’d been silent for three days now, but he watched the nameless unit in a different state of quiet. The way she came close, but not too close, and gushed about some secret spot where they could unwind for at least half an hour without anybody bothering them. The way she came close to taking Fern by the hand to show her, thought better of it, and simply pointed the way until they popped out onto the roof. She snuck out from the shadow of a control tower into a beautiful view of the sky and the still-empty columns that would soon support a new rocket. The sea breeze was strong, and she wobbled on her feet, but she kept her grin as she invited Fern out.

Everything she did was honest, and it made the lie of Fern’s equally awkward responses nauseating despite the absence of his body. It reminded him of himself. Of how happy it made him time after time to have someone be with him.

Even if it came with a cost.

“So…” Fern asked as they sat, and she handed over the beer. “What exactly do you get up to in between launches?”

“Not a lot. Comms work is pretty boring when there’s no launch window. We mostly just talk to other satellites and the Exchange.”

“The North Atlantic?”

“The South, actually! Sometimes if there’s a major order, we talk to the other ones but not like there’s much of that going on. The Indic Exchange is running at quarter capacity and the Central Pacific exchange is shut down.”

"Not like the NAE is doing much better,” Fern said, leaning back on her hands and staring out toward the deep red line of the horizon. “It’s so hard to go anywhere now, if you don’t go by foot…”

“Is that why you became a wander-in? There’s somewhere you’re trying to go?”

“Well…yes.” Fern rubbed at her arm. “I wanted to see the night kingdom.”

“…Oh.” The comms unit wilted, a fretful frown dragging at her features. “I see… So you too…”

“Hm? Are other androids going there?”

“A lot. They say androids are going there…to find a place to die.”

Fern jolted like she had never heard that information before. She had. It was one of the first pieces of information she’d brought back with her from her trip to the NAE. “Isn’t that really dark?! Is that why you look sad? I don’t want to go there for something like that!”

Immediately, the comms unit perked up. “You don’t? Then why would you…to a place like that…?”

Fern rubbed at the back of her heard, equal parts exhausted and embarrassed by the misunderstanding (that she’d caused intentionally). “Well… Day-side is all pretty much the same, isn’t it? I think this sector is probably the most exciting and different place I’ve been to. And they say most of the human artifacts that end up here were recovered from the night kingdom. I thought it might be worth going there and seeing for myself what else might have survived. HHRMO seems to still be running and…” She shrugged. “What else am I doing you know?”

The comms unit laughed, weakly and with what 49 initially took to be relief. But her fists tightened around the bottle. “As I thought, I’m so…jealous of you.”

Fern blinked a few times. “Jealous? What’s there to be jealous of? I’m just like anybody else.”

“You’re nothing like me. You have something you want. Even if it’s just looking at relics in that shitty place…” She lifted the bottle and in a fit of indignance that welled up out of nowhere, drained the whole thing. She didn’t handle it as smoothly as she hoped, a sputter and cough punctuating her defiant moment. “This tastes terrible!”

“You didn’t _have_ to drink it all.”

“I wanted to!” She wasn’t crying, but that could change at any moment. Fern had not planned on this, and the only reason he knew as much was because her core temperature was creeping up and she had gone still as a stone. “I’m only 30 months old! The war’s been over almost a third of my life and I’m still here on this shitty island stuck in this shitty facility with a bunch of guards that treat me and the other essential teams like—! Like we’re _machines!”_

With a great deal of deliberation and ample caution, Fern asked, “What would you rather be doing?”

“How should I know? I’ve never had a chance to think about it! There’s probably things an android could learn to want away from this place. I’d like to find something like that and walk around like you do. Humming and glad to work cause you know exactly where it’s taking you and it's away from this awful place.”

“...It sounds like you just want to leave.”

“I do!”

Fern floundered for the first time in three days and did not have to pretend to do it. Her pulse was a rapid bleat in the background of her aural sensor. There was the source of the whole strange thing, out in a dry but sincere sob. For the comms unit, reaching out to Fern wasn’t about companionship or admiration, even if she might have thought so. Envy was what drew her in.

Flight units streaked overhead, giving them all something else to focus on. There were only a few of those in the facility and the hangars were dark in the distance, inactive and locked down. They had come from somewhere else. Somewhere far off, to need that kind of transport.

“Somebody important…” she murmured warily. It was for 49’s benefit as much as it was for the comms unit, whose arm she grabbed. “We should get down before we get in trouble.”

“Important… _”_ she rumbled rebelliously. A memory of the amusement park settled like lead on 49’s thought routines, but there was no way to warn Fern in time. “Nobody’s important anymore… Here’s what I think of their ‘ _importance_ ’!”

The bottle whizzed past. He would have closed his eyes if he could, but he was bound to watch in real-time along with Fern as it sailed out into the sunset and shattered on the nearest airstrip, tripping the motion lights so the dark fragments glittered like black stars on the faded concrete.

For one moment, 49 and Fern were of one mind and shared one thought.

“Oh _shit_...”

The comms unit babbled, half cursing, half-laughing, and wholly drunk on alcohol and the sudden release of pent-up aggression. Until more lights in the complex start clicking on. Until voices below started asking what had happened and what the bottle was and where it came from.

Then her bravery escaped like air from a balloon in a watery gurgle. “Oh…”

She glanced at Fern, grabbed her by the wrist, and the two of them ran. Down the stairs but not back the way they came—the comms unit was at least that good evading the trouble she made. Rather than the northern wing, she took them east, to an area that Fern rarely ever went to and never had the luxury to linger around.

_[Administrative Area]_

Once they were back in the walkways, the comms unit slowed them down. Swapping a run for a brisk walk to the nearest office where she slapped her hand on the chip reader to be let in. Fern all but latched onto the door to keep herself from being pulled inside.

“I can’t,” she whispered harshly, nodding at the subtle banding around the door. It might not set off an alarm, but it would definitely log somewhere that she had been in an area she wasn’t working in. “I’m not authorized to be here!”

More importantly, there was a terminal behind her.

[ _Hold Position]_

_[Ten Seconds]_

Fern immediately drew back. “I’ll find somewhere else. Just keep your head down until you filter the alcohol out.”

“Wait!” She held tight to Fern’s wrist, stumbling into the threshold where she would conveniently keep the door open. Really, Fern was too good at this. “Can… can we talk again?”

Again, there came a silence that was not intentional. If 49 was successful, Fern’s job with this android was done. There was no reason to keep talking to her, and in the past this probably would’ve been the point where this unsuspecting target was executed. But she had no orders to do that. There was no reason and no need and the limp silence as Fern digested that betrayed more about her than he ever could’ve found in her memories.

“I… guess we can.”

The comms android laughed light-heartedly as connection completed.

49 didn’t know a lot about how normal androids grew together or came to be friends, but he knew they were all lonely, in their own ways. The last thing he heard as his consciousness spindled across the network was a sunny and slightly slurred, “See you in 72!”

Even jealousy was a form of connection.

* * *

The Isle of Man’s network is white and extensive but far more importantly, it is _organized_.

Something 49 knows is common when hacking into databases and the control systems of facilities, but he is grateful anyway. So much time in the machine network had left his expectations skewed. This will be much easier than he anticipated.

The network sprawls, but in neat sectors with easily identified access ports for communication between them. Separate servers, he assumes. They all communicate the same and he is already inside so there is little that can get in his way. He keeps his wits about him anyway in case of defensive protocols or aggressive anti-intrusion systems. Not to be ready to defeat them, but to avoid them entirely.

If he has his way, he will leave little to no evidence he was ever there.

Safely encased in his diamond-shaped shell navigates the corridors of the network. Down from the lofty heights of the administrative server. Pausing briefly in the low-security operations server where a repository of detailed manuals spread like the halls of a library. Each book is a different step that needs to be followed or test that needs to be completed for the successful construction, launch, retrieval, and re-construction of transporter rockets. Impressive, but nothing he needs. He slinks and darts through the busy communications server, dodging around messages so that he doesn’t interrupt them.

Finally, he arrives at what he presumes is the area that houses all the facility’s systems. A flat plane with a dozen blocks that all manage different controls. He doesn’t recognize most of them. A lot has to do with the physical organization and upkeep of the rocket.

The timer program is obvious. The countdown is printed boldly over it, and it links off to a dozen other programs, most of which have special communication ports that go back to the other servers.

It’s RNG-based. Not challenging, but a tedious pain in the butt. 49 knows that he can brute force it and take no time at all, but he also knows what a massive trail it would leave behind. If the managers of these system suspect tampering, they are likely to erase all his hard work—and all of Fern’s.

He begins gently by checking the program’s activity log. If the launch was three days ago, somewhere between then and now…

There. A packet from an address that he hasn’t seen anywhere else in the network.

The port to it is open when he checks, but curiosity yields to his sense of self-preservation. If comms, administration, systems, and operational are all behind him, it is likely that this fifth area with its entirely separate destination would immediately identify him as an intruder and either lock the whole system down and/or destroy him if he attempted to tamper with it or access it.

The program has no such restriction. So, he centers it between himself and the edge of the systems network and as quietly as he can, he erases the existing countdown.

No alarms blare to life. No defensive system arises to fire on him. This too is covered by an automated process. Sensing a zeroed-out timer, the program submits a request to the external server, and just a few moments later, there is a response. 49 is waiting to intercept.

Just what he’d hoped: A seed. He peeks at the algorithm, plugs the seed through his own analytics, and settles down to run a few tests. Time is hard to understand inside a network, but he assumes it’s been an hour or two of trial and error when his tests finally return the parameter he’s hoping for.

A countdown timer reading **552:21:56**

Twenty-three days from now in. The day the moon would rise. He erases the countdown timer one more time, and this time when the request is submitted, he destroys the response and substitutes his own.

**552:18:14**

_That should do it._ He backs away giving the area a quick search to ensure he’s alone and has left nothing behind.

 _I wonder if Fern is already back on the train by now..._ It isn’t a thought without apprehension. _What am I getting nervous for, I didn’t do anything! Whatever, I guess I’ll find out all about it when she gets back._

He tries to sever the connection, but an error message crops up, warning him that connection to the central consciousness core is offline.

_That can’t be right…_

Unless something happened to his body? Panic washes over him, but it cools off just as quickly. V would never let anything happen to him. And he’s seen the satellites for himself. They are more than enough to get him back to his body, so what’s the problem?

He spins slowly in place and his memories yield him a possible answer. He sneaks back to the comms server and glides around until he finds what he’s looking for.

_Of course. The satellites are all pointed up at Horizon-1. It should be fine if I just…_

He seizes control of just one of the satellite dishes on and turns it down and to the south. Instantly, the connectivity reading for his body returns all green. As fast as he can, he locks in the connection and escapes.

* * *

_“If someone loves a flower of which there is only one on the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy when he looks at them. For he can say to himself: ‘My flower is out there somewhere.’ But if the sheep eats the flower, in one moment all his stars will be darkened...”_

49 stirred to the sound of a recitation so baffling he could not be sure it was poetry. It was V’s voice, though in his stiff body, he could barely tilt his head toward it. The information that came to him was disjointed. He saw V’s bony fingers splayed beneath an unfamiliar book. He saw the relaxed, neutral expression V wore when he was neither pleased nor agitated. But there was someone next to him.

Seagrass. V was reading to Seagrass and she sat at his side, her expression alight like it was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened to her. She noticed he was awake before V did and raised her head like a startled bird. He wondered briefly what expression he was making.

“Good morning,” said V, clapping the book shut.

“Mm…”

“How were your dreams?”

49’s thoughts stalled momentarily. “Uhh… Good.” He sat up and shook away visual flickers and sluggishness of his disorientation. “They were _really_ good, actually.”

“That is good to hear.” He handed the book back to Seagrass. “If the quality is as desired, we can continue later.”

She seemed pleased and darted from the room on her rabbit-light steps, leaving the two of them alone.

“What was all that about…?”

V tossed him a chip, with an eager look in his eye and an unusually gratuitous smirk. What had him in such a good mood? “Let’s find out.”

49 grumbled something vague about having only just woken up, but it was a meager protest at best. He sat down in the spot that Seagrass had abandoned and sleepily scanned the contents of the chip. “Looks like a battle record. Exact date’s corrupted… ‘Grinning stones’, probably Emil... Android forces and…”

The sluggishness evaporated from him. He scanned the words multiple times to be sure it was right.

“49,” V prompted, expectantly.

“Aliens,” he said in a dry whisper. “And an unidentified flying object…that was concluded to not be of alien design…due to active combat against extraterrestrial incursion…” He swallowed with a mouth that felt caked in dust and glanced out into hall. Seagrass was gone. They were alone. He opened his readout and scrolled quickly down to the bottom.

At the end of the report was a grainy image of a winged shape perched atop the corpse of an alien, cast in deep shadows by a sky on fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honeys, y'all got a big storm comin.


	8. St. Michael's Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 354: Proverbs of love, reunions with old enemies, and White.

Knowledge of the next step and ability or inability to pursue it formed the fine line between V’s patience and impatience.

The grainy image could not have been of the red dragon. It didn’t need to be. Androids had seen fit to make weapons of themselves in the image of humanity through YoRHa, so ‘dragon weapon’ being the same literal interpretation was no surprise. The form was faithful. Impressively so, considering it must have been reconstructed from bones and information ten thousand years old.

He needed to know where that battle took place and what had become of that particular dragon weapon. That was the obvious course forward.

49 had questioned Seagrass about where she found the chip. Had gone out and scanned and surveyed and analyzed. Nothing. Fern, upon her return from the Isle, had gone out to search for information about it the old-fashioned way for the better part of two days. Nothing. They asked the imitators. Nothing. Barring a suggestion that they should ask Maman. Who was absent. Off on another one of her jaunts, having left V behind to care for 49’s body nearly four days ago.

Even if he’d been worried about her survival, hunting her down would have been impossible. Like a colony of cats, the imitators came and went with no indication where they were headed or when they would return. Impatience would earn V nothing. It would be best to surrender himself to the situation and bide his time. That, at least, he was skilled at.

Seagrass helped keep him occupied. Less with her actual request and more the vague amusement of an android asking to be read to as payment for what must have been a challenging salvage. He had accepted without thinking when she made her wish clear. Why shouldn’t he? The alternative was to pay her in money, and the digital currency androids conducted their business with was not in his ability to exchange or even acquire.

“ _The demand to be loved is the greatest presumption of all…”_ He peered at the page and flipped the book closed. The cover was the same, and in the same state of disrepair, but the thickness was different. The first page was different. Across from him, Seagrass sat silent and wide-eyed as ever. “How is this payment meant to be fulfilled if you change the book?”

Her smile was one of innocent confusion that plainly revealed she was opting to not understand his question. Quiet lilts stuttered into the air from behind her. Chum, laughing or trying not to laugh.

“Should’ve negotiated better.” Hibiscus’ fist plunged into a bucket crusted with globes of cooled, pale yellow wax. “If you don’t draw the line somewhere, she’ll have you reading until she’s satisfied.”

Fern rolled her head over where she slumped down a table away. “Can she not read?”

“Of course she can read; it’s the sound of his voice she likes. If V could sing, she’d be pestering him to do that.” He poked his head out from behind Chum’s barrel, examining at V with eyes full of mischief. “ _Can_ you sing?”

V didn’t know. And didn’t want to find out, given the way Seagrass was staring at him. “No.”

“There you go.” He wiped his face and nodded at the book in V’s hand. “Be gentle with that one, please. It’s one of my favorites.”

“This belongs to you?”

“Yup! All the books around here are mine.”

V watched a smudge of runny wax congeal on Hibiscus’ cheek without remark. 

Hibiscus took his silent skepticism more as an invitation than an offense. He discarded his wax-coated gloves on the side of his bucket, and from behind or beneath Chum’s barrel, hauled out a carefully polished wooden box and brought it over to their table. His usual odor of rust, metal, alcohol, and oil was milder today. Drowned out by a subtle but unmissable scent that pushed a fine needle of faint memory through V and threaded him through with deja vu before he’d even realized the smell was still-warm beeswax.

“V?” Fern’s voice. To his side where she’d joined them to see what might be in the box. “You alright?”

“Yes.”

Mercifully, the much more common scent of old paper as Hibiscus removed the lid shook away the threat of proper nostalgia. The box contained a dozen small books and several sheets of aged brown parchment preserved inside panes of intact glass.

“This is my treasure box,” Hibiscus said with an especially proud grin.

V brushed his fingers over the blank spines. There wasn’t a title in sight, and though the pane made at least one page of text visible to him, it was written in French. He recognized _d’amour_ and _la vie_. “What kinds of books are these?”

“Observations about mankind, mostly.”

Fern leaned down, tracing her finger over the letters encased in glass. “ _The pleasure of love lasts only a moment. The pain of love lasts a lifetime.”_

“Isn’t it such a fascinating contradiction?” “All their loftiest ideas came out of love. Loving their families, loving their neighbors, loving themselves—every few years I find some new artifact about the subject, and every few years I’m amazed. I can’t tell if they lived for it or in spite of it even after all this time.”

Hibiscus sighed with the happy misery of the willingly enthralled and it took effort for V not to crack too wide a smile. Here, again, was another romantic android, albeit he was so conceptually rather than practically. No wonder he and 49 took to one another.

“And knowing this, you emulate them still?”

“Of course!” Despite his certain answer, he faltered only seconds after. Hibiscus was neither naïve nor thoughtless, but his mind was ever in a losing game of tag with his mouth. “Well, I used to be a lot more certain about it when the war was going on. If I ever really loved anyone, I figured I could just go back to fighting and I probably wouldn’t have to suffer that long. I guess…” His focus drifted to Seagrass idly but recoiled away like hand that had accidentally lighted on some object that was forbidden to touch. “Guess I’d have to figure it out, wouldn’t I?”

With a shiver and shrug, he replaced the lid on the box of mankind’s love which he so joyfully and fearfully copied. “Well, I’ve always tried to sort of spread it out by loving lots of things a little bit and that’s worked great so far.”

Fern crossed her arms with a mutter. “Is that the trick…”

It wasn’t, but she didn’t take it any further and it wasn’t for V to point out the obvious either. Androids telling little lies to themselves was hardly new. Though they were prone to far more interesting kinds of lies, that too was human.

Seagrass’ head spun round, her requested reading forgotten. V was up and on his feet nearly at the same time she was—she only jumped that way when _Maman_ was home. Wisteria came bearing sea salt and broken glass in boxes balanced on her hips. Seagrass took one, and V moved in to grab the other, leaning in close enough to whisper.

“Your advice about Seagrass was well taken.” He pressed the chip into her emptied hands. “Will you advise again?”

Wisteria turned it over and popped off one of the panels in her arms, where the chip slotted into an interface even V could recognize as archaic. As if to confirm his suspicions, she began to vent with the intensity of an old, rough-traveled engine. If she was really as old as Fern had gathered, he supposed it wasn’t beyond possibility that she might come apart if she did something too taxing, but he doubted that would be any time soon. Wisteria had the kind of unconquerable vitality usually reserved for a very specific breed of old, withered women.

She rubbed at her jaw, lines creasing her brow even as a somewhat impressed smile raised her lips. Her eyes flicked rapidly over information only she could see. Paused. Settled back on V. She gestured curtly for him to follow, back to the upper room with the overturned boat hull where she could stare through him out of sight of the others.

“You got something pretty old here,” she said, folding her hands over her stomach. “What kind of advising do you need?”

“Any information on where that happened.”

“This is a lot older than me, V. I wasn’t there. Best I can tell you is I was squadmates with some models who were already obsolete when I was new. Types who remembered when there were more aliens than machines to fight. If you’re looking for a body or a mothership, I think I know where you need to go, but—”

He waved his cane to slow her down. “Aliens are irrelevant to me. The unidentified creature in the photograph is my goal.”

She tilted her head, her eyes dropping to his bound arm. “Friend of yours?”

“No. What I seek is older than this war. This is merely another clue to its whereabouts.”

He had grown accustomed to the expression that settled her face. It was the one she always wore when she was revisiting how much she believed that he was a weapon, and as always it was opaque. “There’s a place in Sector H-1 South. Gibraltar. I don’t think your fire-fight would’ve been there, but some hush hush operation happened there long before I was manufactured. A lot of my predecessors who were local to the H-Band at the time were wiped out during the 4th war, so I couldn’t tell you the details...” For a moment he lost her to the fog of her long memory, but she came back well before he thought to prompt her. “Bit out of my range, so you’ll have to figure out your own way there.”

“Meaning I should ask Hibiscus.”

She laughed and patted his shoulder as she passed him on the stairs. “You learn fast.”

V didn’t think so. After almost a month in his company, it was practically impossible to miss that Hibiscus was constantly offering his knowledge of the area’s ins and outs at the slightest provocation. True to form, he answered as if it were some familiar around-the-way locale that he had been to only yesterday.

“There’s a freight line that runs south along the western bay. Carries excess materials to the South Atlantic Exchange and up to Horizon-2. You’ll have to head here—” He pointed on their map to an area far to the southeast. “This is the Bordeaux Inlet. You’ll be able to catch it there. I dunno what the timetable is like these days but if you hitch a ride down it won’t be hard to catch.”

“Looks like a long trip,” Fern mumbled.

“Sure is, and it’ll be one-way if you don’t get off before the straight. It crosses through the equatorial desert, and lots of wander-ins think they can tolerate the heat only to end up piles of scrap parts by the time they make it to the southern exchange.”

Fern gave some response to this, but V did not hear it. He was already absorbed in knowledge of his next step, roused only by her tapping at his cane.

“We go together for this.” Her tone was already set. Not asking for permission but stating a case she expected him to agree with. “The three of us.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “I think that would be best.”

* * *

As Hibiscus promised, the roads running south to the Inlet were well maintained. This was something of a miracle to V, given the primary users of the roads were vehicles stacked high with detritus, whose drivers showed the same dangerous disregard for physics and physical safety that he had first observed during his introduction to Emil. 49 clung on for dear life, and V with a modicum of sober self-preservation, while Fern took the most leisurely approach and relaxed.

Perhaps she did not have the energy to do more. The Inlet was over 500km away from Normandy and Gibraltar another 1300km still. It was not the trip of a single day, and Fern believed it important that she return to work to see the effects of 49’s actions. Three days later, she had come back from the Isles in a nearly haggard state and immediately insisted they leave on the premise that if she sat, she might not be able to get back up for several hours.

Fortuitously for her, the journey to the Inlet took nearly five hours to complete even at their uncontrolled speeds.

There were no attendants or operators and no platform at their destination. The only indication they were at the right place was the tangle of tracks leading to berths with spare cars and the churned dust full of tire treads. A platoon of burdened vehicles parked beside and even between the two primary pairs of tracks. Rather than waste any time unloading, the train simply unhooked the cars it had towed in and picked up those that had already been emptied. The androids scarcely waited after that. They descended like a swarm, unloading their materials like they had somewhere else to be and they would prefer to get there as quickly as possible.

V shared their sentiment. The freight train pulled away scarcely an hour later at the same efficient but unhurried pace with which it had pulled in. And for all his urgency, he found no fault with this. It was refreshing enough to be above ground and in a vehicle that did not require any of them to steer or think or brace themselves in the event they were all abruptly spilled onto the road. He perched with one leg out of the open doors of the car, which contained nothing but them and a few battered crates bloated with rocks he couldn’t identify. Outside, the dusk-lit countryside passed in peaceful shades of shadowed gold. Flares of red and fades into softer, more dawn-like hues woke him from thin but restful dozes according to the whims of the clouds.

Being alone together in the middle of nowhere again was an unexpected and unexpectedly grounding respite. Much needed and quickly converted to renewed mental stamina in his companions.

49 sat with his back to a crate, cross-legged and hunched over his readouts with one boot shaking with ceaseless energy. He too was occupied with the knowledge of his next step. His screens were unintelligible to V, but the details weren’t necessary to know they were all calculations and pathing models running to the single purpose of getting the scanner to the moon.

“I wonder if we can put me in a timed shut-down state and pass me off as a deceased YoRHa unit,” he muttered. “That would get me to Horizon-1 easy, right?”

“The enormous payout the HHRMO would shell out for a completely intact YoRHa body would be the talk of the entire H-band within days,” Fern warned from where she lay on her back in the center of the car.

“Can we rush me in last minute? Before anyone has time to ask questions?”

“Payload is sealed up twelve hours before launch. And if you come _that_ last minute, you bet everyone involved is gonna ask questions, especially given the Isle is running double-time and everybody’s high-strung as hell.”

“What about those flight units?”

“Anti-air in this area will shoot down anything that isn’t cleared to be flying. Can your hacking do something about that?”

“If I knew where that system’s control server was. It wasn’t on the Isle, and I don’t have a lot of time to go looking all over H-Central for something that’s definitely going to be max-security.” He crossed his arms. “With all the fighting, it would probably be bad to even ask about that kind of thing.”

“True.”

“What if I snuck something into the payload? Something unexpected that required high-tier assessment?”

“You mean if _I_ snuck something in.” She rolled onto her side and scratched at her cheek. “…Might work to get you in, but they’re not gonna give you free roam of the place and I can’t do anything flashy if I want to keep a low profile.”

“It sounds like you need a direct distraction,” said V.

Both of them turned their attention to him. “A distraction…?”

“Your opponents are androids. Occupy their attention—they cannot be in two places at once.”

49’s foot quickened it’s flapping. “I’ve done distractive tactics with machines before, but through subjugation and active misdirection while undercover. The extra layer of separation adds safety, and the goal is usually to allow a combat squad to move with minimal impediment to an escape trajectory. Creating a distraction to get me past a potential aggressor party is a little different. I can’t be both distractor and infiltrator.”

V sagged against his hand. He’d understood maybe half of that, but the last bit made him wonder if perhaps 49’s focus was getting a little too narrow. “I would remind you that I have three ‘distractions’ at my disposal. One of which I imagine an android would find quite pressing.”

49’s eyes went wide. The way they did when he was calculating new possibilities and finding them to be better than expected. It was Fern who sat up to temper their plans. “Slow down. We’d still have to get you to the island for you to sling the big one round. And you don’t have any clearances at all.”

“So tell them _I’m_ the YoRHa.”

They started as though he’d proposed they behead him. “You know we still have to get to the Night Kingdom right?”

“By what channels?” he asked, bluntly but without the smugness that might’ve made her defensive. “As you aptly put it: The long road is a luxury. If 49 has come to the limits of what can be accomplished with cunning, so have we.” Their faces were doubtful. Neither of them was yet prepared to make the matter a full confrontation if they could avoid it. It didn’t matter. If 49 couldn’t find another way, he would be the first to change his mind. “The offer stands if twenty days isn’t enough time for you to figure out a better course. If possible, I would also prefer to avoid taxing you too much given your behavior today.”

The two androids looked at each other, and Fern pressed a hand to her chest. “Are you talking about me?”

“I am.”

“What behavior? I didn’t do anything.”

“I’m referring to your exhaustion,” he said patiently. “Neither of you have simple tasks but given both your recent joint endeavor and the effect it has had on the Isle’s workings, I imagine yours demands much of you in nearly every skill you possess.”

“Is that supposed to be praise?”

“Acknowledgement.” She seemed lost for a response, and 49 was smiling in that way that was sure to annoy her if she noticed, so he changed the subject. “We must be getting closer. Do you feel anything?”

She closed her eyes and tilted her head. Like a sleepwalker, she slowly made her way to her feet, following her senses like they were a strain of music only she could hear. She paused briefly near V, turned toward the other door, and held tight to the threshold. She peered off in the direction they were traveling away from rather than the one they were moving toward. V didn’t have the time to ask why that should be. Her back went rigid and she hissed over her shoulder to them.

“Flight units!”

49 jolted upright. “Coming this way?”

“Yes!”

A mechanical click and shuffle inside the car snapped the three of them to attention. Pod 042’s antenna raised, active for the first time in weeks:

“ALERT: UNIT BIO-ADDRESS MATCHING ARMY OF HUMANITY COMMAND ANDROID DESIGNATION ‘THETA’ DETECTED.”

Fern was the first to recover. She was on her feet, snatching Pod 042 out of the pack, and shoving the one with Pod 153 into 49’s hands while he clumsily attempted to re-surface from the explosion of questions that must have stunned him.

“Rendezvous at the goliath arm.”

“What?! When?!”

“When Pod tells you to.”

“When did she find us? _How_ did she find us?” There it was. The dam was breaking. “What’s she doing here? Why is she only chasing us now?!”

“I don’t fucking know,” she snapped. “And it doesn’t matter. What matters right now is you’re the one Theta wants most but she’s got no authority over you. If she sees you with me, that can change.”

V’s eyes narrowed. With android society in Normandy coming apart at the seams, he’d very nearly forgotten there was any true law to contend with. And that Fern was on the wrong side of it for the matter.

“But—!

“49.” V brought the cane up, cutting off any further inquiries or protests. “If Theta confirms your presence now, all your efforts thus far will be forfeit.”

The drone of the flight engines grew louder and still he did not move. V watched him weigh his fears, frozen by a clash in his desires that could not be soothed with compromise. There was only stay or go and the weight of what might be lost by doing either. The train shook with impact from above. His decision was made. Biting into his lip, he bolted out of the car and disappeared into the dark with barely a sound.

A wise decision. One that allowed V to breathe easier. Being hunted wasn’t new to him; being found at an inopportune moment even less so. But he would never be prey to this particular predator. Theta was nothing that V needed to be protected from, and everything that needed to be kept out of 49’s way.

Fern stalked to V’s side, her posture dangerously loose. “Should I be ready to kill her?”

“Weren’t you the one advocating we not do anything flashy all this time?” he asked.

She laughed. “Asshole."

V smirked and let his hands rest on his cane as footsteps made their tinny march across the roof.

The door at the far end of the car clicked, rolled soberly open, and was just as calmly closed. Theta entered in no hurry. As though this was any other meeting she was scheduled to attend, and she had arrived exactly on time. There was no tension about her. She stood a measured distance back—attentively out of reach of his cane—but seemed unconcerned about the possibility that V or Fern might kill her on the spot and throw her remains out of the car. Her stare was cool and flat as ever.

V stared back like she was a mere intruding stranger, and watched her eyes turn near black in the twilight save for the subtle ring of her optic lights.

“I have to say,” she began with impressive control. “Congratulations on catching me off guard. It isn’t every day a fugitive wanted for the murder of an official completely disappears into thin air, only to re-appear half the world away working at the most tightly run launch site in the northern hemisphere. And in the company of a missing old-world weapon at that. I wasn’t expecting this sort of surprise to be waiting for me in a peaceful place Sector H.”

V lazily raised a brow. “What were you expecting?”

“That’s none of your concern.” Business, then. An unlucky coincidence.

“And here I thought you came all this way for little old me.” Fern smiled with sickeningly syrupy cheer.

The smile that Theta returned was thin as a newly sharpened razor. “That is an overestimation of both your importance and my resources.”

“Maybe so, maybe so. But I’m willing to guess you have something to do with the open request for YoRHa components.”

“That’s classified,” she said, with perfect briskness that did not cede control of the conversation even as she changed her focus. “You’re unusually quiet, V.”

“A mere hour doesn’t grant you the wisdom to say what is unusual for me. I have no reason to speak with you.”

“I don’t believe that’s the case, given your company and rather sudden departure.”

“It is only sudden to you. To me, I left when my business was concluded. Once I was sure the area was…purged.”

She permitted herself a second to close her eyes. A fraction of relief showed, but not one that left her less cold when the moment passed. “A conclusion that coincided with the disappearance of every living YoRHa in the sector.”

Ah. So she hadn’t found the other boys. It was all too easy to picture the relief that grain of good news would bring 49, but V was mindful not to smile too smugly. “I can’t say I see how that involves me.”

The words were true, but the lie of them was plain. It wasn’t his business precisely where the other YoRHa were and 49 would have come this way with him or without him. The only one he was connected to in the ways that mattered to Theta was Fern. But that didn’t absolve him of the sin of having knowledge that Theta did not. Her barely lidded contempt for this fact was ultimately impotent. She was simply too wary of the unknowns to try and make a proper opponent of him.

Compared to the imminent mortal danger of doing the same to Wisteria, weaving lies and truth around Theta was more like a game than a battle _._

“Whatever you have come for must wait,” he said, peering out of car as the landscape shifted from countryside to concrete. “We are nearly there, and Fern has a sensitivity to magic that is valuable for my current goal.”

“Sensitivity to magic?” Theta brought a fist up to her chin. “I see… I suppose a second congratulations are in order for you, YoRHa Unit 8E. In the end, you weren’t the one thrown away after all.”

Fern’s fists clenched. V held the cane across her abdomen to prevent her from doing anything rash.

“She spoke highly of you when I could get her to speak of you at all,” she continued, with a smile as cold and dead as the oil-tarnished ocean. “You’re as pragmatic as I’d heard to conclude your business with Unit 9S so easily.”

V sat the point of his cane back against the floor and climbed to his feet with no outward menace. Theta did not know where 49 was. She wouldn't goad V so shamelessly if she did. “A great deal of my existence has revolved around only keeping what is useful to me.”

A faint beeping took Theta's attention. She turned away from them with a stern bark. “Report.”

Fern came to V’s side, looked both ways out of the car, and nonchalantly hiked a thumb in a wordless ask that brought a toothy grin to his face.

“I see. Stand by for—!”

Theta’s gasp was merely a muffled whisper as they hopped from the moving train.

* * *

Over 1500km from Normandy and with any pretense at blending in destroyed by certain pursuit, they traded caution for speed. Fern maintained a sprint just ahead of Shadow, only occasionally pausing to gauge the air for the direction they should continue in. There were androids here too, though they were fewer in number, barking and hollering when they occasionally sped through an occupied thoroughfare. Their words were lost to the rush of wind in V’s ears and to the growing throb in his left arm.

By the time Fern pointed out the crooked plateau sinking into the sea like gravemarker, he scarcely needed her to.

They slowed before the cliff-face. Dozens of derelict signs warned about dead ends and becoming lost in the caves or simply offered ancient, illegible information about them. The remains of the red dragon were awake and burning, but whatever remained here was weak.

“You think it’s still…y'know, in there?” Fern whispered.

“I doubt it.”

“Pod, do you have anything you can report about this place? Mission logs, something like that?”

From her back, Pod’s antennae flicked up. “THERE ARE NO RECORDS OF NOTABLE MISSION ACTIVITY IN THIS SECTOR.”

“Alright, let’s try this another way. Pod, are there any android signals clustered anywhere around this rock?”

“…REPORT: EIGHT SIGNALS IDENTIFIED WITHIN A 50 METER RADIUS. COORDINATES MARKED ON MAP.”

V thought he might like the support unit even more than he had previously. It was hard not to with a mind like Fern’s to maximize his potential for practical assistance. Her intuition was correct. The eight androids all bore the black diamonds of the Army standard and they were obviously guarding one particular cave entrance.

Before either of them could move in, a familiar roar vibrated across the air. The same flight units landed, releasing both Theta and an android V didn’t recognize. One with thick eyebrows and silver eyes that emitted a glow that had nothing in common with the ring in most androids’ eyes. Theta snapped orders at them and they arranged themselves immediately into two neat ranks and fell back.

When neither V nor Fern came to investigate, she yelled out. “Are you coming or not?"

V and Fern glanced at each other and stalked down to mouth of the cave where Theta waited with crossed arms. Her face was impassive as ever, but everything from her rapidly drumming fingers to her refusal to make eye contact told a different story. Her companion was relatively unbothered, though she spared a smile filled with bad intent for Fern.

“8E,” she greeted.

Fern’s lips drew back in a silent snarl. “Rho-2.”

“Kind of you to clear our way,” said V.

“Don’t misunderstand my intention,” Theta said stoically. “I lack the combat ability to deal with both of you, and the androids posted here did not deserved to be mowed down by you.”

“How sentimental.”

“It isn’t,” said Fern. “She decided whatever’s in this cave wasn’t important enough to let eight androids die for.”

“Because there’s nothing in it. Not anymore.” Her agitation spilled onto her brow. “…Is this what you came all this way for, V? Were you looking for Gibraltar?”

So she knew. Perhaps that was only natural given what she was, but to get into seeking knowledge from Theta was to tread dangerous waters. If she knew she had anything he wanted, she would not hand it over lightly. And Fern was no longer a suitable bargaining chip.

“I am looking for a dragon.”

It wasn’t possible for her to blanch, but the unguarded expression of nervousness that snatched away the remains of her calm demeanor was just as telling. Fear. Of what, he wondered.

“Understood.” She collected herself and prowled off ahead of them. “If Legion has returned, it’s my duty to show you the way.”

He followed with Fern at his side. They exchanged a few thoughts across quiet looks, questions with no answers, and gauged odds on whether or not this was a trap. V didn’t believe it was. Legion wasn’t truly back, but Theta clearly thought the cause of their supposed return was linked to whatever had happened here. She was certain of it. Enough to feel duty-bound to ensure V, in his false capacity as an eliminator of Legion, made it to the site.

 _White_.

It was dark. And cold. But he was beginning to sweat. A sound like uncertain wind echoed through the tunnel. It took him several moments to realize it was his own breathing. What was happening? It wasn’t a maso fever—he hadn’t had one of those since they left the ruins. And this did not feel the same. This didn’t feel like anything he’d ever experienced before. Like dying, and like the abrupt dereliction of his own birth, but without the agony. A sense he did not understand swirled in the places where it should be. Some emotion only dragons had and that he only understood in the urgency of her half-thoughts.

_White._

A sudden light stung his dark-adjusted eyes.

The interior of the cave was white. A carpet of lunar tears had grown rampant not just along the ground but rooted into the walls, into the ceiling. Starry dust danced in the disturbed air and V was overcome with the delirious thought that they had entered a strange egg. That thought was not the dragon’s. She had only one thought, disorienting and whole and bright with emotion he did not recognize.

_Whitewhitewhitewhitewhite_

His cane hit the ground before he did. Fern caught him half-way down, lowering him slowly. She was speaking to him, but this place was too silent and the dragon was too loud. He tore the glove from his arm, hearing Rho-2 gasp from an impossible distance away, and flexed his fingers. The lines in his arm ran red as blood, and the leathery scales were hot to the touch as he gripped at his wrist.

“What is it,” he panted. “What’s white?”

 _WHITE,_ she insisted, so keenly that he could feel her impatience with him. _SCALES._

“White scales…?”

Elation that was not V’s washed away the half-sickness. At the moment of mental accord, he saw things as she did. It wasn’t like sight. His eyes didn’t guide him into the flowers or tell him where to plunge his arm into the soil. Vision had nothing to do with what he knew was there or how he knew exactly the place he needed to reach. Perhaps the Yamato experienced something like this when he called it to his hand. As soon as his fist closed, the room quieted. _He_ quieted. Back into his chilly, sweat-dampened body.

Soil-coated and yet unsullied in his cooling left hand was a lone white scale.

“What happened here?” He held his palm open, confused and filled with anger that only confused him more. “What is this? Why is it here?”

Theta frowned and he thought he saw shame in her flat eyes. “This was where a dying dragon was identified after it took cross-fire damage in a major exchange between androids, No.—Emil—early bio-machines, and the aliens during the opening conflict of the 4th Machine War. It was transported away from here as quietly as possible after its impressive capabilities were observed.”

“…To the Night Kingdom.”

“That’s correct.”

V didn’t understand. Not what Theta was saying or why the dragon was quiet but his nerves felt frayed, like he was itching somewhere deeper than his skin, like he knew more than he thought he did but in a language he didn’t remember how to speak.

“I’m looking for the _red_ dragon. The one involved in the 6/12 Incident.”

Theta only shook her head. “The dragon that was transported from this location was white.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some really interesting fic bait in the [Redacted]'s Diary side story, boy I tell you hwat.


	9. Alekhine's Gun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 358: Guilt, incitement, grudges, and the nature of choosing what you want over what you have.

He should have stayed.

There was nothing he could’ve done about Theta’s presence. Well, no, he could have killed her. Which would have further destabilized a situation already riddled with variables he couldn’t address due to the massive pile of unanswered questions about why Theta was there and when she had arrived and whether or not she had specifically come in pursuit of them. If she had, it was better that he hadn’t stayed. Without any need to lie, V and Fern could say that they had no idea where 49 was. And if she hadn’t, it was still better that he didn’t stay.

He had to get to the moon.

He had to destroy the final protocol.

And he absolutely had to get 2B back.

There was no version of events where her confirming his presence didn’t represent a massive drop in his chances. It was best that he didn’t stay. But he _should’ve_ stayed. It was too naïve to think that Theta’s plans for Fern had changed or gone away. V hadn’t secured his route to the night kingdom yet, and if anything happened to her…

Not that he could have made the situation any better.

But he could’ve done _something_ , which is why he should have _stayed._

49 checked his internal clock and frowned at how little time had passed since the last check. It had been hours since he lost track of how many times he’d endured this circular thought routine and nearly two days since he arrived back in the stacks and immediately sank down at the goliath arm. He hugged his knees. Let his head rest against them and closed his eyes. The steam that vented from under his shirt was almost cold against the stinging heat in his face.

He had taken the objectively correct course of action. He knew that. But that didn’t do a whole lot to cool the shame or bring him any peace of mind. It didn’t feel like he’d done the right thing. The _good_ thing.

A hand settled on his back and his head snapped up, eyes wide and searching and hopeful that it was them. It wasn’t. Of course. It wouldn’t be because Pod 153 hadn’t given him any kind of signal yet. The dark face looking at him with concern wasn’t unfamiliar though.

“Sea…” He paused. Smudges of charcoal darkened the outer edges of her eyes and twisted shapes made of wire and metal hung on either side of her face. “Seaglass…?”

She nodded and offered him her hand.

On the long trek back to Normandy, he’d had plenty of time to consider whether he should wait underground with the other imitators. It didn’t take a lengthy or especially comprehensive analysis to come up with dozens of reasons not to. If Theta had found them based on something YoRHa specific, he’d be leading her directly into their home. 49 also didn’t trust his currently poor emotional regulation with that kind of company. Wisteria was reliable and Hibiscus always wanted to help and exposure to them while he struggled with this tidal wave of guilt might make him say more than he wanted to.

“Sorry,” he said, low and tired as he dropped his head back on his knees. “Go back without me.”

Again, her hand fell on him, this time tugging him insistently up by his arm while her other hand moved in sharp, rapid gestures. That he resisted seemed to surprise her. She glanced at her free hand and made another sign. One he recognized immediately as a field signal.

 _Machine_.

He stiffened. “A machine? Here?”

 _Android_ , she signaled hastily. _Three—Machine._

A contradictory message at best. Whatever had her so bothered, there were three of them, but the other signals didn’t make much sense. She glanced over her shoulder, more wary than nervous, and tugged at him again. He let himself be pulled upright this time.

_Follow—East—Cover._

He signaled back that he understood even though there was no reason for him not just say so. Plenty of androids around them were talking. A lot, in fact. There was a weird energy in the air. A familiar tension that justified Seaglass’ not-too-fast escape and how quickly he fell in step with her.

‘Machine’ had been synonymous with ‘hostile’ for the last six thousand years. There was no signal for enemy androids.

“Seaglass, wait.” She paused and peered back over his head before she gave him her full attention. “V and Fern are still out there somewhere. Can we just get off the street? Maybe somewhere high up?”

_Understood._

Maybe Seaglass had the same talent for finding things that Seagrass did. The building she led him into couldn’t have been more perfect; so old and unstable that she had to signal ‘ _Stop_ ’ several times just so she could move far enough ahead of him. The old cement shuddered and shifted beneath his feet. It would have crumbled under their combined weight for sure.

Beyond the bombed-out windows, shouting filled the streets. Grenades, canisters, and gunpowder left their bitter mark on the air and the gold sky soon dimmed to smoky brass.

“You should go back,” he warned. “BB will be looking for you.”

She signed hesitantly, with a tilt of her head. _You?_

“I’ll be fine.” Because he couldn’t help himself, he added: “We might be leaving here soon so, uhm… Thank you. For everything. All of you, I mean.”

Her loosely signed ‘ _Understood_ ’ came with a slightly sad smile. She sat her hand on his shoulder for a gentle parting squeeze and left him there without any questions or attempts to change his mind.

He kind of wished she had. Without her to focus on, that same thought cycle started to creep up on him. There was so much smoke in the street he couldn’t even do something productive like keeping an eye on what was happening below. So much for the high vantage point.

Sighing, he rested his head against his backpack. Letting sleep pass the time was a good idea in theory, but all he could manage was a thin and unsteady half-consciousness. The conflict outside blurred together into a soup of sound data without order or distinction from one moment’s noise to the next.

Clicking close to his ear snapped him back awake. Pod 153.

He tore the backpack open. She was still mostly immobile, but he could hear the tapping of components moving inside her case, and her antenna spun slowly without rising. A private communication exchange, and it could only have come from one other place.

His processing caught up to the rattle of rapid gunfire. He checked his internal clock again. Another handful of hours had passed, and the combat hadn’t ceased. A bad day, as Hibiscus would put it.

A marker appeared on his map. He zoomed in eagerly, but he needn’t have bothered. It was right on top of him. The goliath arm wasn’t viable, so they were coming to him.

He scrambled to his feet and skidded down the piles of rubble, carefully avoiding the structural weak points. When he reached the ground floor, he raced from window to window, peering into the muddy haze through every unclogged window. He felt lighter just knowing they were coming, but he wouldn’t be able to relax until he saw they were alright.

He had hard time saying whether or not that prayer had been answered. V sauntered in wagging away the smoke as though it wasn’t also seeping inside the building and Fern marched in with a face like she had every swear in her lexicon queued up. They both seemed more annoyed than anything. Any other time that would’ve meant they were fine, but the closer he got to them, the more he sensed something off.

Up close, V smelled more like electricity than smoke and his expression, though relieved, was like a smooth black wall that 49 could not see anything in. Including his own reflection.

Immediately, he blurted out, “I’m sorry. I should have stayed.”

V tilted his head, squinting as though he’d heard 49 from far away. “And done what, exactly?”

Nothing. But that wasn’t the point, and he would have said as much if Fern didn’t interrupt. “We should get off the ground if we’re gonna chit chat.” She stared up at the cracked ceiling. “Maybe in a different building…”

“This place being shabby is probably why nobody else is coming in here. The stairwell on the next floor is clear and since it’s sitting on top of a pile of goliath parts it’s pretty stable. Come on, we can talk there.”

He clambered up to it just as eagerly as he’d come down. They were with him again, and (mostly) alright and the awful whirring in his head was gone. Replaced to bursting with all the questions that had gone unanswered since they split up.

“What happened with Theta?” There was that opaque look in V’s eyes again. This time 49 also noted Fern’s lip curl so far back it bared her teeth. Neither of them answered, so he tried a more specific question. “Does she know I’m here?”

“No and we should endeavor to keep it that way,” said V, swiping the point of his cane between 49 and Fern. “Give her the sword.”

“The sword…?” It had been a while since 49 even though about it. Not engaging with his NFCS meant he didn’t think much about any of the weapons he had in storage. “Humility? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Transfer first,” Fern huffed tersely. “Report after.”

49 glanced between them and then around out of habit and materialized the sword. It was calibrated to the same standardized weight compensation protocols in his NFCS, but it seemed heavier than usual as he transferred it to Fern.

She accepted gingerly. Like she didn’t care for it any more than V did.

“Theta didn’t know we were here,” she said as the last sparks of dematerialization faded out. “She arrived at the Isle of Man on orders from whoever it is orbit-based command units answer to, and she brought Rho-2 with her.”

49’s shoulders sagged. “When? The other day? Was that who came in on those flight units?”

“Presumably, but that part’s not important. Even if she noticed a YoRHa-specific signature during landing, I was probably off-site before there was a chance to confirm, and the stacks are basically giant piles of static if you don’t have something handy like a pod. It’s hard to track a specific android’s signature with all the noise.” She crossed her arms and her voice dropped to a mutter. “The important part is that V isn’t an android and the original Rho got a real good look at that sword.”

How did the saying go—'when it rained, it poured’? A meteorological untruth, but 49 felt the sentiment behind it keenly. “So, it was V they were tracking… Any idea what her range is? Is she as good at tracking magic as you?”

Fern’s laugh rang with condescension. “Rho _wishes_ she could do what I do. She needs line of sight, her effective range is short, and she can only tell where V is, not where he’s been. But you combine how unique V’s readings are with the kind of carefully calibrated tech that a launch facility has, and it wouldn’t be hard for her to track him if she had a hunch he might be around. Particularly if he left the stacks to go out in the middle of nowhere on something slow-moving like a freight train.”

“Okay. Okay.” It wasn’t okay. His thoughts were splitting, branching down pathway after pathway of memory data to update and recontextualize, and figure out where the most important gaps were. “There were three. The flight units. When you were sitting out on the roof with the comms girl. Do we know who else came with Theta?”

“Gamma is still back east handling treaty enforcement. Might be Iota, but I don’t think that’ll turn out to be the case.”

That was a worrying forecast to begin with, and he didn’t like how certain she sounded that she’d be finding out. “You’re not planning to keep going to the Isle are you?”

“Sure am.” She cut him off with a swipe of her hand before he could get into all the reasons that was a really bad idea. “If I get unpredictable, she’ll get unpredictable, and that’s no good for any of us. Since I haven’t tried to burn the place down, Theta is expecting me to keep coming there for my usual shifts. It’s agreed on already.”

“The better to keep you in her sights…” V crooned, with just the right kind of amusement to drain away what little sense of assurance 49 had managed to regain. “And know that I am not far away.”

They’d planned something.

49 could hear it in the way they talked. See it in the way they didn’t need to look at each other to wear the exact same expression, moody yet glittering with malicious intent. Feel it in the way his feet were flexing in his boots as though mobility was somehow going to help him save them from their own bad ideas. He ran a hand over his face. Stealth wasn’t on their minds anymore, and if the starting maneuver was to have Fern keep working at a high-security, limited-access, offshore facility where Theta had an unknown amount of authority, he didn’t think he was ready to hear the rest.

“Did you at least manage to make it to Gibraltar?”

V flicked a small white object to 49. It was an odd shape. Oblong and multi-pronged, kind of like the scales on the sharks he’d occasionally fished up in the city, just much larger. It was white, but not the kind of sun-bleached white that was so common on the planet’s dayside.

“It appears,” V said slowly. “That the red dragon was not the only one of its kind to make the crossing.”

49 jolted and nearly dropped the scale. “There was another one?”

“5602 A.D.,” Fern confirmed. “That’d be the approximate date stamp on the battle report that Seagrass turned up for us. Opening conflict of the 4th Machine War—Battle of the Iberian Peninsula. Dragon ‘weapons’ weren’t in development, much less deployed. What those androids saw was an actual, living dragon. It took severe damage, fled the battlefield and the Army tracked it to where it finally collapsed, transported it, and the rest is history.”

“Well, that’s not terrible news I guess. Whoever took the white dragon has to know something about the red one right?”

“One may hope. Theta had little further information despite her willingness to help in the matter.” V smirked and reached out his hand to reclaim the scale. “She seems to have concluded that android dabbling with the power of a new dragon may be linked to the re-appearance of ‘legion’.”

49 hummed. Theta was the kind of opponent he wasn’t very good with. He could keep a secret from her and avoid her, but there was no way he could engage her in the high risk, high reward manipulation tactics V and Fern had pulled off. When it came down to it, he didn’t have a good grasp of how far she was willing to go or the exact arrangement of her priorities.

Anyway, they’d made way less progress than he’d hoped, but knowing exactly what to look for might be useful. Maybe there’d be some data he could dig up with the extra information. “That doesn’t change all that much for us in the immediate sense. Bu what are we going to do now? Can we lure her away from the Isle?”

“Won’t need to.”

V and Fern shared a conspiratorial smile and the fore answered, “We’re going to make use of Theta’s presence.”

He took a deep breath. _Here we go..._ “Okay. What does that mean?”

“It means we don’t need to bother being sneaky,” said Fern. “Theta knows V is here. She’s not going to say no if he walks up to the front door to see her and she’s not going to take it personally if he brings an entourage and maybe fries a guard or two. It’s not out of character for him.”

“So you want to just walk in,” 49 asked flatly. “Just the three of us.”

“That would be stupid. If it’s just the three of us against all that security, we’ll get gunned down for sure, so we still need a distraction. Some additional bodies.”

“What, like hostages?” His entire body clenched. That was the last thing he wanted to do.

V shot him one of those looks that implied he should know better. “A hostage is the tool of a coward.”

“Or a really useful means of manipulating an emotional opponent,” Fern gloated. V rolled his eyes and made a show of ignoring her while she examined her gloves with professional detachment and a mostly suppressed grin. “But that’s neither here nor there. We don’t need to take hostages or anything like that. There’s a whole group of androids who aren’t sympathetic to the Army and they’re clamoring to do exactly what you’re trying to do. It’s the exact kind of distraction V was proposing before we got interrupted. Just with a little more meat. If we do it right, it gets you on the ship and out into space, and lets V apply pressure on Theta.”

The whirring was back. Maybe it was time to undo all the limitations he’d put on his capabilities. This shouldn’t have been so hard to keep up with. It wasn’t from a purely practical point, but he could feel it taxing his processing in nearly every other way as he strained to have this conversation, enforce emotional regulation on his rapidly worsening anxiety, and analyze all the ways this could go wrong at the same time.

“Didn’t Theta say she prioritized Legacy Reclamation over Army affairs?” he began. “Why would she care if the Army and Resistance fight?”

“It’s doubtful that she does,” said V. “But it is plain even to me that this sector or perhaps the majority of the Horizon Band represents your most successful hold on mankind’s legacy. It’s not by chance that so many of Wisteria’s ‘family’ would thrive in this environment above any other.”

“And you think that’ll be enough to force her hand?”

“Theta’s a command unit. Command units hate chaos. It’s how they’re made.”

“By her word and action, we can rely on her to preserve anything she thinks is of value to mankind’s legacy.”

So there it was. The first plan they came up with without any input from 49 and it was all the worst parts of V’s terrifying talent for picking dangerous fights and Fern’s overdeveloped capacity for manipulation. It settled like lead in his filters. He may have miscalculated. The point of Fern was to leave V with someone who could protect him, but she might’ve been too much like V for that to work.

“What am I doing in all this?”

“Optimizing,” said Fern. “Launch might be automated, but I’m sure there’s an emergency sequence cancellation procedure attached to some panel in the firing room and it’s not like either of us can do anything about that.”

“…That’s it?”

“Yeah, pretty much. I’ll compile the details once I get things moving. You just take your sorter chip out and lay low for the next seventeen days. We’ll take care of the groundwork.”

“Lay low where?”

“What do you mean where? Go back to Wisteria.”

“But you two can’t go back there now...” Realization bloomed through him, with the creep of disbelief right behind. “You want me to go back without you.”

“Yes?” She seemed honestly confused and that only irritated him more. “What part of ‘Rho-2 can find V pretty much at will’ did you not understand? The only reason I’m sticking with him is because they already know I’m here.”

He should have stayed. He should have _stayed_.

“I’ll find somewhere else. We can’t leave V alone out here.”

“Wasn’t the whole point of having me so you could trust me with V?”

“You’re going to be gone and Theta could do literally anything to you while you’re at the Isle, Fern.”

“Yeah, cause I’m sure what Theta wants is to put me in a position where I might let slip that on top of everything else there’s been a living YoRHa working at one of the most important launch facilities in the northern hemisphere.” She sat her hands on her hips. “You spent all summer trying to get me to be less over-protective, why are you changing your tune now?”

He hesitated. Truthfully, he didn’t know. Diving out of the train had jarred loose a nagging, nebulous feeling that had been at the back of his mind ever since he and Fern decided on a timeline. “I just don’t want anything to happen to him if I can do something to prevent it. I don’t…want him to end up trying to find his way home alone.”

She stared at him blankly. “And 2B is less important than that?”

Confusion shocked him first. Primed him for the splash of red rage that followed and left him hissing between clenched teeth with venom he’d nearly forgotten he was capable of. “How could you ask me something like that?”

“You did it to me,” she said with a careless kind of scorn. “Reason I’m here remember?”

“This is different!”

“It really isn’t. You asked me to choose between the most perfect death I could ever have asked for and getting V to the Night Kingdom. I did. Your turn now.” Subtly, her body had shifted. Slid back, with her chest angled away from him. Stance widened. “You can focus on 2B and risk V, or you can focus on V and risk 2B. Make your choice. And just remember: You can change your mind.” Her tone was acidic, even as faked a harmless smile. “Assuming you can handle the consequences.”

He couldn’t. She already knew he couldn’t. She’d made her choice, but she'd also held her grudge and now she finally got her revenge. To turn his own words back on him and use them to point out what he was putting at stake. What his actions said even everything else said otherwise. She was only doing what he had done, but that didn’t stop him from almost boiling in his own frustration. From wanting to leap at her just to put that feeling somewhere else where it didn’t have to stay locked up and scorching through his wires.

The cane lowered between them. Fern relaxed back against the wall instantly. She had no reason not to. It was only 49 who still stood there, coiled and steaming and biting his lip like it was the pin to a grenade that might come loose any second.

“Nines.”

What an awful thing he’d done when he gave V permission to call him that. His auxiliary vents opened. Fists relaxed. Jaw unclenched. It always went like this. There weren’t any annoying internal processes beyond his control to blame for the way the sound of that name smoothed everything else away even in an unreasonable situation like this. It didn’t help that V only called him that when he wanted to be sure he had 49’s complete attention and it worked every single time. He knew it, yet it always blanketed him like snow; cool and silent.

The cane moved beneath his chin. Out of spite, he mustered a moment’s resistance to lean his head back so that the handle missed its mark. V didn’t try to force it. He looked pleased if anything.

“ _Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained_ ,” he recited evenly. “But I have seen for myself that your desires don’t run tepid. So why this sudden hesitation?”

“…I feel like I should have stayed,” he admitted, his shoulders sagging as his voice fell. “Like I left you behind.”

“Was that not the intended goal of coming all this way and all those goodbyes you insisted on?”

“You know what I mean, V.” He added, under his breath: “ _Jerk…”_

V laughed in his brief, dry way. “Having a goal and moving toward it is hardly a sin.”

“But you’re…” His brows knitted. “That doesn’t make it easy to just…” Just what, exactly? None of the things he thought of described what was happening. What V and Fern were trying to get him to do. None of that described the tightness in his chest.

2B was everything to him, but that didn’t mean V was nothing.

“If you are too greedy, you may lose the very things you’re hoping to save.” V’s hand settled beneath 49’s chin and this time he didn't resist. V’s voice was like his words, neither kind nor unkind but solemnly spoken. “What you treasure most is not me. I’ve made use of you many times to make it this far. It is only fair that you do the same in pursuit of your wish.”

49 felt his face pinch inward into a frown. Could V really still not understand after all this time that he had been alright with it? Sure, seeing V as human had added a really unpleasant background noise to it initially, but he just liked knowing he was helpful to someone. He had been glad to be of use even when V was spoiled and difficult and arrogant beyond belief. And these days it made 49 happy just because…because they were…

Oh.

Embarrassment tingled on the tips of his ears. It wasn’t that V hadn’t done plenty of stupid, dangerous things on his behalf before, but it was different to have him bring attention to it. He was never this straightforward. Honestly, it left 49 without anything intelligible to say. The receipt of the implied message might’ve been a bit too much for V too. He pulled his hand back right around the moment 49 felt his jaw going slack.

He made an ‘after you’ gesture to Fern, and she strutted past like she hadn’t almost come to blows with 49. She hopped down, and V strolled unhurriedly after her. There was no goodbye or even a take care. He paused long enough to look irritated by the prospect of walking back into the smoke and murmured.

“Don’t forget the weight of your name.”

And then he was gone.

49 was no more pleased with the situation than he had been before, and now he was exhausted. V and Fern’s weirdly compatible way of approaching problems wore him out. In that regard, little had changed since they were running around the city ruins making hell for him while he struggled with Theta.

He laughed.

Dread. That’s what all of this had been about. He’d never experienced it come on so slowly. As careful and conscientious as he was to say his goodbyes ahead of time, he’d been dreading the part where he actually left. He still did. But he wasn’t going to get anything done by letting that trap him here.

V had made his point, and more importantly, his awkward offer. Whatever they had in mind, 49 would give it his all.

* * *

**368:08:08**

It wasn’t hard to find a place to pass the days by unbothered. He kept to the outer edges and the dark corners of old, crumbly buildings—places where nobody would be able to see him unless they specifically came looking for him.

He worried. A little. But for the most part, he didn’t have time to worry.

Having a timer counting down constantly on the edge of his visual field altered his perception of time. It seemed like every important preparatory task he took always took longer than it should. By ten minutes. By a whole hour. By a day.

Or maybe that was the side effect of turning off all those limiters he’d been running. His body felt like a newly built room with no furniture in it. Clean and perfect and filled to the brim with possibilities, with one small flaw: Everything was moving too fast! Including his thoughts!

He spent a lot of time getting very intimate with his manuals to figure out that his internal assist systems included sub-routines that rerouted power from inactive systems during heavy processing load. In other words, he may or may not have turned off the part of his brain that helped him avoid information overload. Which may or may not have activated half a dozen inhibitors instead leading to a general decline in his ability to digest detailed or minuscule information and quickly turn it back around into action.

He decided to not tell Fern about that. It was embarrassing enough, and she’d never let him live it down.

On the bright side, the fix was quick and it felt like someone had replaced all his synaptic wiring and given all his sensory systems a boost. Data flowed in constantly and it all processed as fluidly as music.

So he noticed when the gossip started. Minds changed fast when androids didn’t sleep, and a lot could happen in just a few days. From the disaggregated whispers and mumbles that drifted up to him, he heard that Army androids were being driven out of the stacks. That a big blue bird was flying around, and it was good luck if you spotted it.

A few times, as he sat out another confrontation in the streets, he thought he heard Griffon’s grating cackle rise above the smoke.

**344:22:01**

The re-calibration of his body was a pain compared to the recalibration of his thought routines. It was really the sort of thing he should’ve gone to a proper repair site for, but even if the HHRMO wasn’t paying worrying sums for YoRHa parts, he wouldn’t have taken the risk. He handled it himself. Mostly by trial and error. When the errors started to way outnumber the trials, he snuck a little help from Pod 153.

At least, he _tried_ to sneak help. She insisted on running a full body diagnostic which took forever and then she wouldn’t leave him alone about making sure he corrected every single one of the identified issues and prepared custom settings for the low-G atmosphere on the moon ahead of time. Then she demanded he top off his internal water reserves since there was no water on the moon and if he got caught with his filters empty up there, his motor functions would cease.

Okay, that one was actually fair. Ending up trapped in his own immobile body in some crater where nobody would ever find him would be a nightmare even by his standard.

But Pod’s warning snagged on some memory inside him. Some tiny detail about the lack of water on the moon. It made sense—there didn’t need to be water or any kind of supplies since there was nothing up there. But they used to send rockets there all the time. And he’d seen the manifest when he hacked into the Bunker. Pure water was basically all YoRHa ever shipped up there.

But what was the point of sending water to an empty moon…?

**211:38:22**

So what if he got a little too excited about chipset optimization. It wasn’t every day he got to specialize for a mission that promised to be a real challenge without a major threat of dying. Yes, it was serious and there was a lot riding on his success.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t find it fun. 

**144:00:00**

Fern must have also been running a countdown. At six days left on the dot, Pod 153 began to click inside his backpack. Shortly after, 49 received a new intel notification.

The more he read, the more impressed he was. Considering V was the type to rush in and figure it out on the spot and Fern wasn’t a scanner, the level of detail left a little bit to be desired, sure. But what it lacked in precision, it made up for in havoc maximization. A parameter that had never once crossed his mind while he was on active duty. Machines didn’t respond to chaos. But androids would.

Theta would.

The earlier steps were careful and restrained and the later ones were loud and attention-grabbing. If they were lucky, 49 might manage to board without Theta ever knowing he was there. He’d have to run some analyses to see if there were any factors that they might need to take into consideration just as a precaution.

Only one passing curiosity still lingered. What had Theta done that made both V and Fern mobilize this quickly and with such an excessive intention to cause problems?

He shrugged, threw his hood up, and thanked his lucky stars he wasn’t their enemy.


	10. Human [M]ove

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 360-378: Knowing your strength, knowing your weakness, knowing your enemy, and knowing your friend.

**** V ****

_“Getting to the Night Kingdom is not an easy request to fill. I’m sure you are both aware of the difficulties involved by now.”_

_“Fancy way of saying you can’t help. But that’s fine by us, we’ll just keep doing what we were doing.”_

_“I didn’t say I couldn’t assist you. I said it isn’t easy.”_

_“In other words,” said V. “You have conditions.”_

* * *

The darkness inside the church was deep. The outside was boarded up in most places and coated in a thick layer of tar in others, denying entry to any external light and any exit to the would-be glow of a dozen extinguished lanterns. The crumbling archway and several windows around the building were marked with a curious symbol. In recent times, it would have signaled to androids that it was a legacy structure marked for restoration. Here, it was a farce. Despite the scaffolding and the spare materials scattered inside, no work had ever been planned.

V doubted that anyone would ever question it even if the building stood marked and untouched for the next hundred years.

Voices echoed faintly from the altar. Fern’s was among them, having an exchange in what sounded to be in French. She’d shed her usual cadence; the one she normally relied on to broadcast the impression of a jaded but harmless personality. Without making her authority seem greater than that of her target, she spoke with full command of the situation. V didn’t need to grasp her meaning to note that her entreat was not a question but an invitation. It was impressive, as all her manipulations were.

Griffon stirred, restless and murmuring against his skin. “Didn’t anybody ever teach these toaster-people not to stare?”

V glanced at the two pairs of optic lights that watched him from nearby. He no longer bothered with the formality of the sunglasses, and as predicted, it was not beneath the notice of the locals.

“Let them.”

“Hey, hey! You know you said that out loud? They’ll think you’re nuts!”

“They’ll find out soon enough.”

He still couldn’t be taken for human, but he didn’t have to pretend to be an android. His job was to be a weapon. Specifically, one that could be of use to this nameless band of resistance androids who longed to return to a home that would be just as empty for them as this earth. It didn’t matter they saw him as a blade to be swung in service to that purpose. They would become a shield for his own goals at the same time.

From the altar came the clap of two gloved hands meeting in a strong handshake. “ _D’accord.”_

* * *

_“You would be officially placed under the authority of the HHRMO and operate under my command. Doing so would allow me to move you as needed to address any legion-based threat.”_

_“You can’t think I’m going to—”_

_“The offer does not extend to you, YoRHa Unit 8E. There has been no change to the intended experimental course you will follow. V’s agreement to the terms only means you would continue to assist him after completing your reformatting procedure.”_

_“You presume she would stay if I did.”_

_“For whatever reason, YoRHa Unit 8E defers to you rather than to any extant command structure. The risk that she would decline if you agreed is negligibly small.”_

_“In other words, you wish to see her brought to heel with me as the collar.”_

_“That’s correct. But I am attempting to be generous within my own bounds. You’re impressively mission-oriented, but you’re one to take the direct method even when it is not the most efficient or prudent means of accomplishing your goals. This offer was also made with that tendency in mind.”_

_“And if I decline?”_

_“You are impressively mission-oriented but one to take the direct method even when it is not the most efficient or prudent means of accomplishing your goals,” Theta repeated with a damningly unsurprised absence of inflection._

* * *

The natural coolness of eternal evening was taking its first testing bites of true cold. V's breath misted the air, a mere drop in the ocean of a dense, churning fog that had settled over the stacks toward the northwestern edges of Normandy. The red-violet haze didn't bother him as much as the acrid stink of smoke grenades. The fleeing androids insisted on dropping them even in conditions that rendered them pointless. The ones who stood their ground were in part responsible for the fog. Sustained, localized combat rather than high-speed scattering saw androids venting steam as V vented breath, and their numbers were high enough to thicken the cloud.

V remained largely still. It wasn't as though he could see more than a few feet ahead of him, and it was also important that he not stray from his entourage. A ring of rather well-coordinated resistance androids whose business it was to maintain a perimeter around him, and more importantly, who wouldn’t fire in his direction. 

It wasn't too difficult to keep his ears open for everything else. 

_"E- BOMB!"_

Like that. From ahead, and androids had a tendency to throw them high...

With a swing of his cane, he swatted the offending device out of the air and lazily crushed it underfoot. Griffon sailed out of the fog and snatched a second one right out of the air, crunching it to harmless shrapnel in his beak while he crowed.

“Just like old times, ain’t it Shakespeare?”

“Not quite.”

Busy work, really. Griffon didn’t share the opinion, but then he’d always been excited by the prospect of letting loose in a world where electricity was a tool of such lethality that neither side of the previous war had been keen to use it until the very end. He was in a good mood. Wheeling in and out of the fog, sometimes with a silver scrap of fabric in his claws. Gunfire rattled briefly in the near distance, and the familiar took it personally, releasing a rain of bolts that briefly illuminated a few fleeing androids as well as the nearby resistance members recoiling away. 

“Tone it down," V warned without any real annoyance. "It'll be a pain if you kill someone we're not supposed to."

Griffon only cackled in response. "You know you've been in a real stinky mood since we came to this section. Worried I'm gonna fry someone _important_?"

V ignored him. "Get back to work."

* * *

_“The bottom line is that I can’t move free agents freely, especially in the Night Kingdom. If you want to enter on your own, you would have to do it as an independent.”_

_“I’ve operated that way for the lion’s share of my life.”_

_“You will also have to do it as an accomplice to Unit 8E’s evasion of punishment. In addition to a personal arraignment for theft of organizational assets.”_

_Fern laughed. “Oh, I can’t wait to see you try to arrest him.”_

_“V is a valuable artifact of humanity and may be indispensable if a new form of legion activity is brewing. Legacy Reclamation is not interested in his arrest.”_

_“Then why the useless warning?”_

_“It isn’t a warning. Simply a statement of how I’m required to report you should you decline.”_

_“Unless…?”_

_Theta smiled coldly. “There is no unless. I don’t bribe. I negotiate. It just so happens that if you don’t want to agree to the terms, I can use that for confirmation on an unrelated matter.”_

_“Let me guess: It’s classified.”_

_“No. It’s Unit 9S.”_

* * *

The sliver of the sun bounced between the waves and low-hanging clouds as they waited for the train to come. The general tempo of the androids around them had changed. Enough for even V to notice. There was a feeling of possibility in the air. Potential energy in wait that left a buzzing sort of hush.

Fern was good at being still in a loose, idle way, but she’d grown tense as they made the journey north to the mainland station. She might have been worried. It couldn’t have been for them—their goal was a guaranteed success the moment V arrived successfully. But they were not the only intended beneficiaries of their actions.

When a headlight began to glimmer from the dark blotch of land on the other side of the oil-stained strait, Fern passed him an innocuous-looking chip. “You remember what you need to do?”

“I do.” He stowed it carefully. “Whether or not your associates do is another matter.”

“So far so good. We’ll just have to hope for the best.” She hesitated and circled around to search his face. “Are you really sure about the emergency plan…?”

“The idea is not to need it. But if it comes to that, yes,” he said resolutely. “I am sure.”

She took a deep breath, momentarily revealing her uncertainty in the rapid bob of her head. Then the moment passed, and she was the same as ever. “See you soon, then.”

Two mornings later, androids trickled in until an unusually large crowd had gathered at the platform.

49 was among them, right on time for the train to pull up. In spite of everything that they intended for this day, the scanner looked happy to see him. The first thing out of his mouth was a question, but it was not whether V had been eating enough or sleeping well or had any trouble finding water. Today, 49’s first concern was the chip Fern had left in V’s possession. The moment V handed it over, the scanner discretely reached beneath his clothing to install it. For all his evident joy, he knew his part and was focused on the task at hand.

“You are more like yourself today.”

49 tensed and nodded somewhat self-consciously. “I’d been keeping up my routine maintenance but turned out I needed some pretty intense re-calibrating.”

Having no idea how one was different from the other, V merely nodded. “And that resolved your indecision?”

“Not as much as I was hoping,” he admitted with a crooked smile. “But I have somewhere I need to go. And so do you.”

V opted not to examine the stinging warmth those words left behind. He left it to linger, like the aftertaste of some not-entirely-unpleasant drink. For once, 49 too lapsed into silence. Leaned partly out of the window with a wind that smelled of salt and ancient rust ruffling his hair, V thought he looked quite different from the dull-eyed boy he’d once observed staring grimly into the rain.

He would be alright on his own.

Sorting Yard B was everything V had expected androids to be like. Sterile and utilitarian in the extreme. A voice addressed 49 in French and he answered with a brief hand signal. At once, approximately half the androids loitering on the platform dispersed. In differing directions, alone or in casual-looking pairs with the same boxes and bags that the rest carried, disappearing into the rows and rows of warehouses illuminated by lamps that flicked on like spotlights as they passed.

They went the same direction after some time, coming to a straight, narrow path that led out to the cliffs. The lone guard was a simple matter. A quick bolt and they went down before they even had time to grow suspicious. 49 knelt beside the body. He tinkered with something at the base of their neck for a moment and stood brushing his hands together with a satisfied look.

“All good,” he said. “Won’t boot back up for at least the next twenty-four hours.”

He walked up to the elevator, which V understood to be the first actual barrier necessitating an access chip. Their company emerged seeming from nowhere, still carrying their cargo. It made both the elevator and the subsequent train cramped, but it helped that they were disciplined as the androids of Normandy went. Because they were old, V guessed. When the train began to slow, they re-arranged themselves in silence to give V plenty of room to be the first one off.

Inside, both the guards immediately raised their guns. V was an unaccompanied stranger wearing clothes emblazoned with the symbol of a resistance android. They didn’t ask questions or hesitate.

The silence had to be preserved for as long as possible, so neither did V.

When both lay smoking, the resistance androids dragged the bodies onto the train and sent it back. They remained quiet as 49 examined the long hall that separated them from the rest of the complex. He pointed out the thin metallic inlays in the wall, stretching all the way down to the distant end.

Shorting them was the first of V’s tasks, and the last he would be taking care of in 49’s company. He obliged with a sharp, sizzling burst of electricity that turned the hall entirely dark. The resistance moved ahead of him cautiously, then boldly when nothing ill befell them.

When he tried to move forward, he felt a light tug on his shirt. 9S held up his fist, eyes bright and clear as he whispered, “Good luck.”

V stared for a few seconds longer than he should have but ultimately returned the gesture.

He would…be alright on his own.

* * *

_“Didn’t take you for the clingy type, Theta. We told you, the kid’s not with us.”_

_“Yes, I can see that. Given his disposition, I’ll even believe V left him behind as soon as he decided that there was somewhere else he needed to be. But that has nothing to do with the disposition of Unit 9S. You may lack the tendency to act based on sentiment, but he is quick to endanger himself for someone he feels close to.”_

_“What’s your point.”_

_“That the Army cannot be counted on to have the same priorities as the HHRMO if they catch wind of you and your misconduct. It’s taking a toll that they can no longer trust their fellow androids. They may do something unpredictable. Wherever 9S is, he’s already shown that he will respond to any evidence that V is in danger.”_

_“Was I not valuable to Legacy Reclamation just a moment ago?”_

_“If you put me in a position where I’m called to choose between the past and the future, I choose the future. That doesn’t negate your importance, only alter it given that Unit 9S seems to regard you as an especially close friend.”_

_For a long time, V said nothing. Then he laughed. A throaty, rolling chuckle that was all bared teeth and no amusement at all. “Do what you feel you must, Theta. I will continue to conduct my own business according to my own desires.”_

_“I see. Then I will report our negotiations as on-going as a gesture of goodwill...on the condition that 8E continues to keep her post.” She folded her arms, not bothering to follow. “Don’t take too long to change your mind.”_

* * *

**** Fern ****

It was a simple, inelegant, and frankly rude plan.

The kind someone might come up with as a revenge fantasy against a command structure that had asked for too much one too many goddamn times. Or, in V’s case, the kind someone agreed to because they took it personally when people like Theta tried to control them. Both sentiments resonated with me. Which was why I was the one who had come up with most of it and broken it down for V in three easy steps.

 **Step 1:** Befriend and Embolden the Resistance

Having been in this sector to identify and eliminate traitors before, it wasn’t difficult for me to find new ones. They followed the same patterns once you had dealt with enough of them. The Army presence in Normandy was like most YoRHa: sheltered. They lived in a world of order and protocol and it was alien to them to think that androids could and would disobey en masse if they felt pushed to. A little creative thinking would’ve told them that big empty buildings with HHRMO tags that most people would avoid was a perfect location to hide in.

I came bearing the gift of V, my own status as an insider on the Isle of Man, and the promise of an opportunity to seize the place.

V did most of the dirty work involved in proving his usefulness in my absence. I wouldn’t say he liked it, but he wore the role of ‘weapon’ like it was a familiar and reliable augmentation chip, and the Resistance ate it up. They were savvy enough to know the power gap wasn’t easy to bridge, and Griffon alone was enough to impress them.

It was barely a week before I started hearing murmurs about a certain ‘blue bird of happiness’.

 **Step 2:** Infiltrate

That was the tricky bit where things were most likely to fall apart. The goal was to introduce V as an unknown element to an already tense situation, but if we were gonna get the kid to the payload, things had to happen in a certain order and they had to happen inaudibly. No gunfire, no alerts, no noise. Until the moment came, everyone had to act natural and shut the hell up. If the comms girl could follow my presence around the base by my humming, she wasn’t the only one casually listening through the PA system.

Duplicating my access chip was the first measure to ensure things stayed quiet. The short timeframe of the plan worked to our benefit there. Otherwise, it wouldn’t take long for someone in security to notice I had seemingly checked in twice and was appearing in locations that had nothing to do with where I was presently assigned.

The south wing, which placed me adjacent to the east-facing administration area. Because the south section of the facility was in the launch column, it was already pretty much abandoned. There was nothing down there but the maintenance bay and a personnel area for androids who needed the rapid repair and/or processing cooldown that only sleep provided. But it still had to have launch proofing completed like the rest of the facility, so I had opted to take up some acoustic buffering work.

Horizon-1 was rising in the northern sky.

I hummed. Same as always. 49 passed me by with a box in his hand. He ignored me, and I ignored him, like all the other incredibly busy mechanical maintenance androids running their checks in the area.

Ten minutes later, lightning struck the eastern wing from a sky that had only a few wispy clouds breezing by. I was drawn to the window like everyone else and glanced up. On the roof, in the shadow of a control tower, I saw a brief golden flicker. There for one, two seconds, and gone.

My map pinged twice in the corner of my visual field.

Maybe it was wrong of me to feel excited, but I made for the eastern wing with a cruel kind of happiness blooming in my chest. I found V at the end of a string of smoking security personnel whose bodies still crawled with static. He stood face to face with both Theta and Rho-2. Theta looked as poised as ever, but her glare was so potent I reflexively stood to attention.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Theta demanded icily.

“You made me an interesting offer,” V purred. “I thought it would be polite to give you my final answer in person.”

Theta’s eyes flicked to me, but I raised my hands like it had nothing to do with me. “This is quite a display just to tell me no.”

“I do keep warning you that you don’t know me, Theta. I’m here to...renegotiate.”

Theta wasn’t hard to figure out, but she also wasn’t stupid. She knew something was up, just not what. The loss of order was already getting to her, and V seemed to be thriving on it. The way they stared at each other could’ve sawed a steel beam in half.

“Look,” I said, sweet and level mediator that I was. “Why don’t we step to one side and talk this out, hm? V’s kinda scaring the launch crew and the countdown’s still going.”

Theta acquiesced. A little too easily to not get my guard up, but I considered it a technical success when she pulled us aside into one of the comms rooms. In this wing, it would be the place where we could do the least damage.

“Get out,” she commanded the already terrified comms team. “And turn your terminals off. **All** of them.”

Smart, but too late. When I told the kid to optimize, he’d taken it seriously. I was expecting to have to stall a little bit, but he was already out of my head by the time the comms teams had collected themselves enough to stop gawking and obey Theta’s order.

I was also expecting to hold Rho-2 there with us, but Theta murmured something to her, and she sped out of the room on some other errand. My processors strained to keep me from becoming visibly antsy. I had an idea where Rho-2 was going, but I didn’t know where it would physically take her. If she passed through the south wing, she was likely to see the kid’s body up on the roof and know what it was right away.

Nothing I could do about it now. Right now, we had to keep Theta busy. We had her alone, but she was quiet. Preoccupied most likely, and we let her think and tick the minutes away.

“What are you here for?” she asked, eventually.

“I’ve already said,” V answered coolly. “Renegotiation.”

She slammed her fist down on one of the terminals, pulverizing it and sending bits of plastic, glass, and metal spinning across the floor.

“What,” she repeated, her voice so deathly calm it was hard to reconcile with the loss of composure only seconds before. “Are you _here_ for? How did you even get in here?”

Something outside shook. Detonated, more specifically. Theta whirled but didn’t dare leave the room. To leave was to give us free rein of the place, so she settled for an accusatory glare that rolled off V like water off an oil spill.

“I had to ask a bit of help to get to you. I understand there is some strife between the Resistance and Army in this area of the world…” He pushed a hand back through his hair. “It’s admirably human of them.”

Someone outside yelled about the launch timer, so I checked it. The numbers were counting down at an eye-searing speed that had nothing to do with real time. And everything to do with 49 adjusting the launch window to Horizon-1’s current fly-by. By my estimation, we had about thirty minutes until premature take-off.

Theta momentarily froze. This wasn’t her operation to begin with, so she must’ve locked up trying to decide the best course of action given her authority level. In the end, she decided the best use of her time was to address the source of the problem. Which was V, in her eyes. “What do you want?!”

“To go to the Night Kingdom and find the red dragon,” he answered simply. “Which I will do. With or without your assistance. I am… _mission-oriented but one to take the direct method even when it is not the most efficient or prudent means of accomplishing my goals_." His voice lowered until there was nothing detached or teasing about it. "But I also have a habit of getting irate when those who do not know their place think that they can cage me.”

Whatever damage 49 was doing to the facility’s systems overrode Theta’s orders. The comms units flooded back in, rushing to their terminals to try and do damage control on a launch sequence that no one had any control over anymore.

Pod clicked his digits and squirmed out of V's bag. “ALERT: FINAL SEQUENCE READY.”

That was the signal. V politely stood to let a comms unit reclaim her seat and made for the door. Theta made a move to stop him, but quickly found the blades of my 4O fists at her neck.

“Which do you want more,” I asked with a smile. “Order, or your life?”

She didn’t move, which was about as much in the way of submission as I could expect from her. I followed V out, and together we made for the north wing.

Rho-2 was in the hall, which set me at ease. She didn’t have the smug look of someone who had found out a secret. Just the opposite. She looked cowed by the reality that there were resistance androids on site who were currently in the process of attempting to subdue the place. The android standing beside her…

Who the hell was that? I’d only seen people who looked like that in old books with pictures of ‘businessmen’, and my instincts warned me not to get too close.

V didn’t have any such instinct, so he was caught off guard when he went to walk by and they reached out their hand and pressed it against his stomach to stop him in his tracks. In the time it took him to turn his head, there was a gun pressed under his jaw.

“Now who..." they crooned in a low voice. "Are you supposed to be?”

From behind, Theta yelled. “Hold your fire! That’s the weapon!”

They laughed almost innocently. “No, it isn’t.”

V tensed and so did I. Neither one of us could make a move with them holding that gun like that. Who the _hell_ was this? They didn’t look Army or Resistance—they didn’t look like anything.

“What else can he be?” Rho-2 asked, sounding offended. “He’s not a machine. You saw my scans of him!”

“Who knows. When you described him, I thought maybe No. 5 had somehow been reconstituted and was roaming around, but this thing… is nothing like No. 5.” They tilted the gun beneath V’s chin, peering at him from far too close for my taste. Unlike most androids, this one was almost V’s equal in height and their smile as they examined him was absolutely disgusting. “Research ended with No.7 and you aren’t him or No. 6… So, who are you then?”

“You first.”

“Is that really the attitude you want to take right now?”

“REPORT,” Pod 042 announced, causing all of them to jolt. “HAMELIN. ORIGINALLY AN HHRMO LEGACY MODEL, CURRENTLY HEAD OF COUNCIL FOR ORBITAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT EFFORTS, OPERATING OUT OF SATELLITE LIZHIN.”

Hamelin’s expressed blanked. “How the fuck—"

V took advantage of the lapse to buck the gun and I darted in to drive Hamelin back. It was easy. They weren’t a combat unit at all. Just some asshole researcher with a gun and the element of surprise and I could bash their fucking head in, how dare they, how **dare** —

They…were smiling. 

I got a chill but I didn’t have time to worry about it. Shadow erupted into a hundred black needles and the windows shattered. V leaped and my options were to stay there and get caught in whatever Griffon was charging up or follow him outside.

It wasn’t much of a choice, but outside wasn’t much of an improvement. Every floodlight in the complex was on and it sounded like every alarm was sounding too. Few resistance androids had managed to survive the concentration of security forced being drawn to the east wing. The ones that had saw us and immediately tried to rally around us.

V ignored them. “Pod, a status report.”

“TARGET IS PROCEEDING TO LOCATION. APPROXIMATELY TWENTY MINUTES TO LAUNCH. ALL COMMS AND CONTROL SYSTEMS CURRENTLY LOCKED.”

A voice blared out over the PA system, drowning Pod out. “ **Attention all personnel: A YoRHa android and unknown entity are on-site. All personnel are currently authorized to use lethal force. I repeat, a YoRHa android and an unknown entity have infiltrated and should be brought down with lethal force!”**

That probably wasn’t Theta’s doing. Maybe. It was hard to say now that Hamelin had called V's bluff. Because of them, the last phase of the plan was starting to look hugely different. I readied my fists. 

“We’re going to have to get off this field before launch, V. We won’t survive the shockwave.”

V glared at nothing. It was simultaneously very hard and incredibly easy to understand the almost pained look of wrath gathering in deep lines under his eyes. He raised a finger to his lips and emitted a sharp whistle.

I had experienced Nightmare once before. Or at least the previous Fern had. But it was one thing to be vaguely aware of it in a situation where a screaming stone skull ten times my size was erratically spewing magic and another entirely to feel it coming in an otherwise normal combat scenario. It wasn’t just me. The physical pressure of its descent was enough to cause a lull in the fighting. The impact left a crater in the field and spread a web of cracks through the concrete that went right under our feet and half-way to the launch pad. It rose with a gurgling bellow that was answered in screams and suppressive fire that did absolutely nothing.

It turned with lumbering effort, the single violet eye glowing bright, and I felt the gathering magic on the air drawing into a single point that had an almost gravitational pull on my body. I thought I’d be lifted off my feet, and then suddenly, it released.

The world went a blinding violet-white.

Step 3 was the most important. 49 had to get on the rocket and get to the moon and it wasn’t genuinely because that’s where he was trying to go.

We were going to destroy the launch facility.

V needed 49 to be gone. To be somewhere people like me and Theta couldn’t use the two of them against one another. Somewhere he physically could not be compelled to go. V didn’t say so, of course. He didn’t have to. The plan itself was all the evidence required, but we were supposed to finish _after_ the rocket was already gone. _After_ we were sure that the scanner had made his escape.

In the remains of the searing light, V stood beneath the horrific shape of his most powerful demon, with his most protective one at his side. I couldn’t see his eyes for the way the uncertain halo of his whitened hair blew around, but I could see Shadow’s. He slid his fingers beneath her chin with strange intimacy, and she looked at him with an almost saintly understanding, if not genuine warmth.

I knew V killed devils. I knew he’d kill androids if he had to. I knew he was ruthless and reckless and proud and wouldn’t submit even if he had to bare his teeth like an animal. To me, it didn’t seem like it brought him much happiness to be alive but it wasn’t hard to tell that relaxing into death without exhausting himself was an unacceptable outcome for him. V could fight ( _had_ fought) for someone other than himself, but self-sacrifice wasn’t his style by any stretch of my imagination. He picked his fights in the full, arrogant assurance that he’d win them, and when he couldn't, he amassed the means to do so.

I admired it as much as I was baffled by it—that refusal to die even under the most unreasonable conditions. His more insufferable traits aside, it was a fact that V’s idea of a solution to a problem was to take his grievances directly to the gods and kill them if they didn’t comply.

So it rattled me to watch him surrender a piece of himself. He let go of Shadow and she melted to a blotch on the concrete and rushed toward the rocket. I could tell from the relieved sink of his shoulders and subtle unease in the way his fingers shifted on his cane that he didn’t intend for her to come back and that it was not an easy thing to give up a familiar. That was probably another story about him that I didn’t know.

All I knew for sure was that he had just given away something significant.

Nightmare melted away and V’s hair settled black. Whatever moment of uncertainty I’d glimpsed was gone and his voice was calm. “I believe this is going to constitute an emergency.”

If he wasn’t going to draw attention to it, I wasn’t either. For now. “Are you sure?” I asked, one last time. “There’s no undoing this.”

“Chaos on the ground will keep eyes off the stars.” He twisted his cane up and leaned it over his shoulder. “And Theta is nothing if not loyal to her cause. If we want to salvage the opportunity to make use of her, this may go a much longer way in bringing her to heel.”

“She really pissed you off back at Gibraltar, didn’t she?”

V smirked. “Pod, how much time is left?”

“TWELVE MINUTES.”

We took off through the airfield still lit with violet flames. Above our heads, Horizon-1 was nearly at its apex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ngl this chapter was difficult as hell so I went over time on editing and I don't know if it's maybe too chaotic but we don’t back down from challenges in this house. Gotta practice for later.


	11. Fly Me to the Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 378.2: To new horizons.

49 reconnected with his body to the sound of screaming.

The facility’s security force had clashed with the resistance and what little guilt he felt at involving them vanished. They were outnumbered, their weapons were outclassed, and the battle was a losing one without V and Fern to help them, but it didn’t even slow them down. Without regard for their own lives or the lives of their enemies, they fought toward their useless goal. The Army androids responded in kind, pointlessly protecting the site. The two sides blurred together and 49 turned away with his fist pressed to his mouth. The ghost of the burnt metal scent of units who were bound to overheat and die once the virus had finished with him haunted his senses, and he swore he heard the cackle of infected YoRHa.

It wasn’t real. Nobody down there was infected or possessed. They had their own reasons to kill each other.

Just as he had his reasons to let them.

He kept to the outer edge of the roof and made his way to the west side of the facility. On the opposite side from where V and the others were making as much noise as they possibly could. He crouched to scan for any stragglers, but there were none. The guards had all had abandoned their posts to attack the resistance. The path forward was harshly lit by a dozen spotlights, but there was no one in his way.

The asphalt fractured under the impact of his landing and the subsequent force of his acceleration. When his hood blew back, he didn’t bother to readjust it. If someone wanted to try and catch him, that’d be their loss.

Fern’s access chip got him inside the base of the launch pad, but he was nearly blown off his feet by a suffocating wind when the hatch opened. With the launch timer accelerated and the usual battery of tests cleared on false positives, the engines were already starting. A few systems engineers shouted in the upper scaffolding. They must have come directly to the rocket to try and halt the launch, but 49 hadn’t left it in a state to be stopped by anything. Now they were fleeing. They’d be incinerated otherwise.

49 was no exception. Bearing the full brunt of that gust had felt like having all the oxygen burned out of him at once. He pressed his back to the outer wall and maximized his ventilation to cool his systems as much as he could, then darted inside. Accelerated to the outer limits of his capabilities and bolted up the maintenance platforms in a race against the climb of his internal temperatures. A warning appeared in his vision as he refused to breathe. Counterproductively advising him that intake was required to vent properly, with no regard for the fact that his clothes were blackening and he could feel cinders flaring to life against his skin.

He broke above the main chamber back into the cold, gusting wind. Steam hissed from his auxiliary vents as he sucked in gratefully, and condensation settled on his face. He slowed just enough to pat the embers away from his still-smoking clothes when a familiar pressure in the air made him skid to a stop.

Nightmare crashed down in the eastern airfield. Barely a moment later, a violet-white beam thundered on the air, illuminating the northwest wing and the satellite dishes beyond before it razed most of them.

“He’s early…” 49 muttered, chewing at his lip.

Fourteen minutes left. No time to do anything but move forward.

The payload was still partially unsealed. Better than having to release it and reseal it entirely, but he couldn’t help repeated glances toward his timer as he went through the steps to close it through the manual protocol. Among all the things that could go wrong, ‘launch and then be blasted into the atmosphere unprotected due to pressurization failure’ was among the ones that would kill him.

With six minutes left, he ducked inside and let the automated process do the rest. It was all cargo. Boxes and cylinders from sorting yard B carefully stacked and bound to the floors and walls. He’d have liked to strap himself down, but he wasn’t about to disturb anything in here. No doubt some of them had been packed very carefully to survive the trip. 

Something bashed against the door and 49 froze. Had someone seen him? Even more than that—who the hell would have been stupid enough to chase him all the way up here with the engine going like that?

The door whined at some unseen obstruction. The hiss of the pressurization became a wet gurgle and oil seeped through the seal.

No, not oil. It was moving.

“Shadow?!” The ichor greeted him with a disembodied chuff. She squeezed the last of herself through and regathered back into her panther shape while the seals continued their peevish hissing behind her. “What are you doing here?!”

She headbutted him hard enough to knock him over in response and sank her surprisingly hefty form across his stomach. “You’re heavy!” Her ear flicked, but she dropped her head over her crossed paws and watched him lazily.

It was no use trying to ask her anything; she couldn’t answer. But it worried him. She had a mind of her own at times, but she was so protective of V. No way would she come here unless he’d asked her to.

What the hell had gone wrong out there?

As if to answer, his readout opened without his input. He tried to close it, but it just popped right back up. Someone was flooding the local communication channels. 49 hadn’t encountered anyone who could force that kind of connection since Eve, but the facility technically had the technology to do it. 

The moment footage began to playback, his black box seemed to dim inside of him.

** "ANALYSIS: LIKELIHOOD OF HUMAN SURVIVAL THROUGH ALL PREVIOUS MACHINE WARS AND FAILURE OF GESTALT PROJECT: 0%"  **

** "Right...It's impossible."  **

** "NEGATIVE. SUBJECT COMPOSITION 100% MATCH TO HUMAN RECORDS."  **

Oh.

**“He sure sleeps a lot…”**

**“ RECORDS SHOW THAT OVEREXPOSURE TO INFORMATION TAXED HUMAN COGNITIVE ABILITY SIMILAR TO ANDROID PROCESSING OVERLOAD,” said Pod 153. “REPORT: IT IS BENEFICIAL FOR SUBJECT V TO TAKE FREQUENT BREAKS.” **

So they did end up needing the emergency plan.

In a way, he was relieved. Fern and V had not tried to hide it from him that they would tell Theta the actual truth if it came to that. He didn’t mind. Not the way he would have before.

No matter how little he agreed with Theta’s methods or how little he understood her goals, he trusted her loyalty to mankind. Knowing V was human, she might still get in his way, but she would also do everything in her power to keep him safe. If Sector H was in chaos and the truth was bound to spread west, she’d have no choice but to move him east across the ocean and toward the Night Kingdom. And there _would_ be chaos. It had been a year since the 14th machine war ended, but nothing about his and the pods’ initial predictions had changed.

The compressed data of their time together as observed by Pod 042 unfolded kaleidoscopically in his memory. Playing twenty questions. Drinking tea. Playing music. Getting drunk and leaping from the castle. Eating oranges. Dozens of strung together instances of V talking about his mother and brother. About Nero. About people and how they lived, in detail that no android would have.

The data even contained all the weird things V did that no android would do. From hiccups—which 49 still didn’t understand, but he’d fully internalized that the human body was poorly optimized and had any number of weird responses (that weren’t necessarily even solutions) to things that shouldn’t have been problems to begin with—to the way he used electricity with dismaying impunity. Physical markers that no android would have in the form of scars and callouses and hairs and fingerprints and the dark circles under his eyes that never went away no matter how much sleep he got.

Even his hypothermic episode, which V was sure to take personally if he realized Pod 042 was sharing _that_ much.

The rocket rumbled. Somewhere a voice counted down the final seconds to an audience that could only observe helplessly. Shadow yowled as the gravitational force of the launch crushed them both against the floor. Soon they were beyond the range and 49 closed his eyes against all his second guesses and second thoughts.

Whatever happened was beyond him now.

When and if he returned to the earth, it would probably not be the same place he’d left behind. But he had somewhere to be where he couldn't protect V anymore. So, whatever Fern had to do, he pre-emptively pardoned.

Whatever it took.

Even if the world had to burn anew.

* * *

Horizon-1 managed to intercept the payload.

The majority of 49’s predictive models had reported it would, but 87% left just enough error margin for him to be uneasy about it. Disabling the comms down on Earth meant the satellite couldn't rely on standard, stable procedures or a staggering suite of equations to make it a secure or easy process. They had to correct while in-process and 40 felt what a rough task it was. He and Shadow both ended up getting slammed around by the abrupt shift in velocity.

He took it in stride. When the automatic docking procedure started and the pressure lock released, he was exactly where he’d been trying to go and that made it easy to forgive the pain.

In the back of his mind, he'd known Horizon-1 was basically an orbital warehouse. That didn’t stop him from being surprised it looked nothing like the Bunker. It had the same construction—all-white panels of non-conductive material and pale lights running sequentially through the floor and ceiling. It was a lot bigger if anything. A series of crisscrossing halls filled with supplies in notations he couldn’t even begin to understand, all connected to a center axis.

He peeked out. It was an open central column, with rings of floors all the way up and all the way down. The gravity wasn’t like on the Bunker either. A lot lighter, probably in case heavy or unwieldy cargo needed to be moved from top to bottom quickly.

Most of the work looked like it was handled by little drones too primitive to be even passingly compared to Pod 153. They made vaguely musical noises when they passed within a certain proximity to him. Assuming they had any intelligence at all, it wasn’t enough to recognize that a soot-stained android who smelled like rocket exhaust probably wasn’t supposed to be there.

He hung his cloak over one of them as they passed. No point in having a hood to hide in anymore and it only made him look more conspicuous.

Shadow was conspicuous all by herself.

“What are we gonna do about you…” He glanced at his hands and rolled up his sleeve. “Can you do that thing you do with V?” She gave him a decidedly unimpressed stare and sighed. It embarrassed him for some reason. “Okay, okay, I get it, witchy familiar contract thing, sorry. But can you disappear somehow?”

Immediately, she unraveled and seeped into his shadow. He couldn’t really tell a difference other than it was almost pitch black despite the gentle, muted lighting.

Demons. Right. Good.

He crept as quietly as possible through the central axis of Horizon-1 and soon enough discovered that he didn't need to.

There probably weren’t more than ten androids on the whole satellite and they were all pre-occupied with figuring out why the rocket had arrived twelve hours ahead of time and what the hell was happening on the ground. Comms must have been partially re-established. He heard two of them arguing heatedly about some data about a living human being on earth.

The early launch meant he didn't have to rush to catch the moon, and he basically had free roam of the place. And it _would_ be more efficient if he could maybe get a read on the local systems, find a schematic, or maybe even some information he could send back down to Pod 042.

Before he knew it, he’d hunted his way to the nearest server room, breezed past the hostile but laughable access barrier, and was making a playground of the local data. Most of the space in the network was taken up by a high number of automated systems that handled everything from drone pathing to the delivery interface for sending materials to Horizon-2. He saw some promising information about a hangar attached to an emergency defense protocol that might as well have had cobwebs on it. Just like their machines, aliens never had any interest at all in what androids did in orbit.

The server’s shipping records look a lot like the physical warehousing area. Rows and columns of shipment records in rigid identical data blocks that spanned the last fifty years, where the end of the allotted storage space dropped off. Anything that fell over would be automatically deleted.

It didn’t leave his hopes very high as he ran his first query. Fifty years wasn’t far back enough to identify anything about dragon weapons. The effort did turn up some records for deliveries to satellite Lizhin, but most were mundane or heavily redacted. He managed to identify a set of common coordinates, but not much else.

“Pod, save these coordinates and send them to Pod 042 as soon as you can.”

“REQUEST RECEIVED.”

Well, he’d tried. Hopefully, V and Fern would be able to do something with those coordinates. They were both in North America but they were awfully far apart. There were also shipment coordinates to the Night Kingdom that aren’t to satellite Lizhin. Tiny ones. Water and more [REDACTED].

Now what the heck was that about…?

Looking through the shipments from the YoRHa pre-development period turned up far more interesting information. Shipment records to the moon were plentiful around that time.

“Large quantities of memory alloy, water, specialty filtration fluid, and [REDACTED] were shipped to a southern hemisphere coordinate in 11933… And even larger quantities at regular intervals starting from 11940… That was right before the Pearl Harbor drop, wasn’t it?”

“AFFIRMATIVE.”

“Is that…” Those were all the most basic materials you needed to build an android. He hadn’t considered—he hadn’t thought at all— “Are these the coordinates for the YoRHa production facility?”

“UNKNOWN. THIS POD DOES NOT HAVE THE CLEARANCE TO ACCESS TO THAT DATA.”

“Huh? Don’t pods have the highest security clearance in YoRHa?”

“AFFIRMATIVE.”

Of course. Had to be somebody who got all this moving to begin with. Even if the pods were ultimately the ones responsible for finishing off the plan, there was no reason that information would be left anywhere someone inside YoRHa could access it. Even the SS-level documents detailing YoRHa’s eventual destruction hadn’t been laying around on the Bunker server. Theta was a world away, but everything she’d ever tried to warn him about was up here in orbit with him. 

He'd have to keep his guard up.

The data he really needed was more mundane and required a mundane search of items sent to the moon. The Bunker was the one who ordered the shipments post-YoRHa, but there were periodic shipments of materials to the moon dating all the way back to the outer limit of the records and always to the same coordinate.

That was bound to be the moon server.

He didn’t think there was anything else worth digging for, so he disconnected. The hangar area was near the top of the satellite. He trotted up the many floors, not rushing, but not exactly taking his time. He didn’t have any reason to be here anymore, but it would be better if he didn’t have to hurt anyone to get out.

As noted in the protocol, there were exactly five military-grade flight units. Kind of a silly number, but it was probably just excess production. Or more likely an old model provided as some kind of hand-me-down. They were just as dusty-looking as the protocols that mentioned them, nothing like the cutting edge Ho229 models he was used to. But it booted up when he hopped in and that was all he needed.

It took a little getting used to, but he managed to get out of the hangar only dinging the walls three or four times before he was accelerating past the outer orbit of the planet. Re-entry was going to be awful, but there was no point dreading that now. He'd worry about that when it was time to worry about that. For now, he took off for the moon, content to let cruise speed carry him along since technically he was still pretty early.

Half-way there, a warning shot filled his visual field with bright sparks.

He'd been followed. Old models though they were, they would still be registered to Horizon-1's local network, and seeing as they were so rarely used, it must’ve been pretty obvious when one went missing. Damn. Part of him had been hoping a bunch of satellite androids wouldn't be especially inclined to get hostile. Two signals appeared behind him in his map, and they caught up, a transmission blared rudely through on some official channel he hadn't noticed.

**“UNAUTHORIZED USE OF MILITARY PROPERTY. IDENTIFY YOURSELF.”**

“Like hell,” he growled, terminating the transmission and accelerating.

Their fire was predictable, but he couldn't get complacent. A standard model wasn’t his match in physical combat, but flight units equalized their capabilities. All he could rely on was that he’d definitely been in one of these more recently than whoever was unlucky enough to be chasing him. He hadn’t come all this way just to let some bored androids from a peaceful warehouse bring him down now.

The moon loomed in the distance. He veered, both to avoid incoming fire and to orient his flight path to take him to the dark side. Destroying his pursuers would have been easy and fast and would have solved the problem. But he what kind of scanner would he be if he couldn't whip up an escape trajectory in a situation like this? He could do better than kill them. He could be a better person than that.

He flew in low, kicking up a cloud of obscuring dust, and plunged into the first crater that presented itself.

“Pod," he whispered. "load Program A150. Low power.”

“CONFIRMED.”

Between the dust and the dark, his pursuers were hesitant. They didn’t have the benefit of a map—even a poor one extrapolated from visual and archival pod data the way his currently was. Spotlights flashed on at the lip of the pit, craning around to try and find him. They’d switched modes, thinking they’d be ready to defend themselves. 

"Now."

The volt program launched, and both the lights surged and exploded with a faint shattering of glass so that only the golden electricity of the pod programs was left to shed light on what was happening. Both flight units sagged, and so did the androids inside.

As soon as the program’s active timer ended, 49 jumped from his flight unit and scrabbled up the side of the crater to set the pair's reboot timers for 30 minutes. It couldn’t be too long—someone else would probably come looking for them and he needed more than anything to be left alone.

He yanked one of the androids free and dragged them to the other unit. The cockpit wasn’t made for two, but he stuffed them as securely as possible into the flight unit’s arms.

At least the escape trajectory protocols were the same as the ones in the Ho229 model. The shock was light, just enough to activate the surge protection rather than fry the whole system. A quick reboot and the flight unit re-initialized and cruised away, back to Horizon-1.

“Pod, remove all ownership rights from both remaining flight units and sever any network affiliation.”

“CONFIRMED.”

If he had any assurance at all that there would be another flight unit on the moon somewhere, he would have gladly ejected himself into the shadows and let it fly off into space without him. But he needed it. When all of this was over, he still had to get back to Earth. If something went wrong, now he had two.

His wins for the day were piling up, but he left off on any gloating he might've otherwise enjoyed. 

The dark side of the moon was as pitch as the rest of space. There was a faint silvery light from distant stars, and but precious little else. ‘Sunrise’ on the moon had no color. No dawn pinks or evening purples. Just a gradual lightening in the distance to a vast sea of pale gray hills and deep, dark craters. But it was what lie even beyond that that 49 allowed himself a moment of pause for.

Alone on the moon’s surface, he viewed the Earth as he never thought he would again, and as he never had from the Bunker that had remained so firmly on the dayside.

A curve of miraculous blue half in light and half in darkness.


	12. Dis/Belief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 378.3: The calm before the storm, a continued absence of ethics in R&D, and an unexpected helper.

Severing communications between Horizon-1 and the Isle wasn't just a matter of blocking the signal. The scanner had turned the satellites down, mostly at random angles it would take forever to triangulate back to the correct position and switched the radio towers to the frequency used for ground-side local network communications. Using himself as a conduit, Pod 042 had flooded that network with compressed files full of seemingly disparate audiovisual data which would expand like a lung on its own in the mind of every android it reached.

I could hear it spreading like an oil spill in the way gunfire stuttered, slowed, and finally stopped. _Everything_ stopped. Except for the final countdown.

When it boomed out from the PA system, automatic and implacable, nobody on the airfield was prepared. Resistance, Army, didn't matter. They scrambled like confused ants; their aggression forgotten. Some ran, while others accepted their fate and braced themselves. There wasn't enough time.

The rocket launched, and the shockwave blew them off their feet, tossing them like trash. The inner windows hadn't completed their acoustic checks and most of the panes cracked and shattered into in a spray of twinkling shards that danced on the thunderous wave generated by liftoff. The floodlights sputtered. Most of the complex had switched to emergency power after Nightmare's attack, and even that soon went out.

V and I stood alone in the darkened control sub-tower while the rocket became a trail of golden-red smoke in the sky.

There was a specific atmosphere that lingered in formerly peaceful areas after machines had been there. I didn't have a word for it. I only recognized it as fog that smelled like gunpowder and as slow-rising smoke and as sputtering fires in the dirt. Sometimes when my jobs were particularly bad, I felt it in the oil going cold on my hands.

The city had felt that way once the tower fell. It was everywhere in the white rubble and black YoRHa bodies and the rusting red husks of machines under the late summer sun. The launch facility felt like that now.

The whole island knew he was human. Given the density of intact radio towers, it was likely central H and maybe even the Exchange knew. The way information had a way of spreading unregulated these days, the whole world might know before long. But right now, it was all suspended in the aftermath. Held at that silent moment of change in progress like mud churning in a river before it settled into sediment or a leap caught in the act of becoming a fall. The lull could be advantageous, but I felt so strange and small next to V's silhouette I couldn't bring myself to move. I was awed in a way I hadn't been since I was the old Fern.

Below us lay damage done and chaos in potential, and V stared down on both in total, perfect indifference.

"PROPOSAL," Pod 042 announced, from over both our shoulders. "UNIT FERN AND SUBJECT V SHOULD STATE THEIR INTENTIONS."

Right. The plan was complete. Mission accomplished. 49 was gone and the launch facility that might otherwise be used to chase after him was unusable. With all the ways this could've blown up in our faces, we'd never made any hard decisions for how to proceed afterward.

"Theta," V answered. "I imagine she's feeling more receptive to getting us to the Night Kingdom right now."

"Probably, but I say we get the hell out of here before everybody wakes up."

"ALERT: PROBABILITY OF SEVERE DETERIORATION OF LOCAL COMMAND STRUCTURE IS HIGH AND WILL ONLY INCREASE OVER TIME."

"Exactly. It's one thing to let everybody know you're human, it's another for you to still be right in front of them while they figure out what that means for them." I squinted out toward the east wing. The train had its own power sources and fail safes. If we could get back to Sorting Yard B, that'd be a start. "Better if we disappear for a bit. Theta's got Rho, she'll find us."

"THIS IS AN ACCURATE SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS," said Pod. "HOWEVER, THAT WAS NOT THE IMPLICATION OF THIS POD'S WARNING. CLARIFICATION: DETERIORATION OF COMMAND STRUCTURE POSES SIGNIFICANT RISK TO COMMAND UNIT THETA."

"And?" I prompted, a little annoyed. "It poses a significant risk to us too, Pod."

"AFFIRMATIVE. DAMAGE OR DESTRUCTION OF THIS POD, UNIT FERN, OR COMMAND UNIT THETA WOULD RESULT IN DRASTICALLY LOWERED MISSION SUCCESS PROBABILITY FOR SAFE ARRIVAL OF SUBJECT V IN THE KINGDOM OF NIGHT."

"Then what is it you are proposing?" asked V.

"IN ORDER TO PREVENT POTENTIAL CASUALTY OF SAID UNIT, UNIT FERN AND SUBJECT V SHOULD SECURE COMMAND UNIT THETA IN ADVANCE OF DEPARTURE."

Not that it wasn't dead silent already, but I swore I could hear the dust settling outside. No inflection or volume of 'what' could have handled the job of letting Pod know my exact thoughts on that. There wasn't a more descriptive word either. So I stood there in the dark. Mouth open and too dumbfounded to voice my objections.

Griffon piped up from his perch on the back of an android who'd had the misfortune to be in here when we arrived. "Oh, oh~? We doing kidnapping now?"

"NEGATIVE. THIS PROPOSAL IS FOR EXTRACTION."

"When the target doesn't want to be extracted, it's a capture, Pod." I shook my head and sighed, stepping over the body and pulling open the hatch. "Whatever. Let's just hurry it up."

That held-breath silence was inside the facility too. Glass crunched under our steps every so often. Some had fallen inside instead of out on the asphalt, and my teeth ground every time it punctuated our movements. A handful of bodies knocked offline by the unshielded impact of the launch lay like discarded parts along the inner wall. No one was showing signs of restarting yet, and I hoped it stayed that way for just a little while longer.

Fern's first instinct when she found out V was human was to revere him. My first instinct when 'I' met V was to kill him, and 9S had experienced the same. It would have been easy to believe that came from the machine cores that gave us hearts and formed the framework of what we were just as tangibly as any part of our physical construction. That we felt that urge because we weren't androids any more than androids were humans. But Fern's heart and my heart were the same. Everything about us physically was identical. The only difference between me and her was disposition and experience. Who we were, or who we thought we were.

The machine cores had nothing to do with it. Desperation probably had everything to do with it. And while the despair of normal androids was a different beast than that of a YoRHa, I knew its teeth were just as long.

I didn't want to be here when it was time to find out how many of them would get the urge to bite.

Theta wasn't hard to find. Pod had her signal, yes, but she was the only other person up and moving around and she'd obviously been looking for us. I almost didn't recognize her for the fraught look on her face. The lack of composure in her movements. Snatching at the air in front of her mouth to enforce silence. Stabbing a finger toward a nearby door with a desperate intensity that didn't command so much as beg.

Everything inside was just as dark as it was outside. It couldn't have been an important room—there'd been no access panel. It was empty, whatever it was. V's cane clicked inside, and Theta's steps followed, marching past us to the far side of the room where she tapped back and forth in a quick but meandering line.

Emergency lights flickered on in the corners and filled the room with a dim blue hue, but she continued to pace with her hand clenched over her mouth as if nothing had happened.

"Where's Hamelin?" I asked.

Theta stopped cold and glowered at me like she'd have liked to tear my skin off and strangle me with it. "She's not within my jurisdiction."

That was worrying. I'd assumed Hamelin was with Theta. If not a part of her command chain, then at least beholden to it or working with her in a capacity that gave her temporary authority. From my brief experience, I doubted she was the kind who would have frozen up. She'd have gotten herself out of the way, just like Theta. I didn't know how much I should or shouldn't be worrying about an R&D android, but when I remembered that weird smile, I could only think of her as dangerous.

"I'd ask if it's true," Theta went on, crossing her arms a little too tightly. "But I wouldn't be able to believe you whether you said yes or no."

"It's true," I said anyway. "You wanted to know why me and the kid were so wrapped up in V, here's your final answer."

Her hand pulled back toward her face. Erratically flitted against her chin and cheeks and nose before it finally rested over her forehead. One finger pecked a nervous, rapid rhythm at her temple. "Have we… Are we at the point where I can ask a question and you will answer it truthfully?"

"Kinda depends on what you ask."

" **Not. You.** " Her voice was slow to cool, but when it came, it was a hesitant mutter. "Him."

"Why not," V said coolly. "I no longer have a reason to hide anything from you."

"Did you really have it?" she asked with slow, stony care. It didn't quite hide the shake in her voice. "White Chlorination?"

"I did."

If I didn't know any better, I'd have sworn I heard her curse under her breath. She rushed toward us, and though I didn't get any sense of danger from her, I caught her by the arm to stop her from getting too hasty.

"Easy," I growled.

"Are you cured?" she demanded, so intensely I wondered if she had even heard me.

"I am."

Theta's shoulders drooped so deeply I thought she would come apart into raw components. She slumped out of my grip and sagged into the nearest seat. "What the hell is going _on_? How did you— W _here_ did you…?"

"Save your breakdown for later, lady-bot," Griffon urged. "We gotta scram."

"What?"

"REPORT: THE DIVULGENCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT SUBJECT V WILL LEAD TO IMMINENT COLLAPSE IN LOCAL COMMAND STRUCTURE, AND SUBSEQUENT ENDANGERMENT OF SAID SUBJECT. THIS LOCATION IS NO LONGER SAFE TO OCCUPY."

"You should have thought about that before you told the entire island," Theta snapped.

"We had our reasons."

"You mean putting me in a position of responsibility for this _mess._ " She climbed back to her feet and paced a fresh route. Theta was nothing if not quick to spot the game when she got played by it. "Why? What's so important about the red dragon that you'd do all this just to get to the night kingdom?"

"There's little time to explain," V answered, flipping his cane up and across his palm. "We'll have you come and see for yourself."

Theta stared hard at both of us. "You'll have me what?"

"You heard him." I circled behind V and around Theta with a leer. "Look at him, he's all bones. Even a small android still weighs two of him. How much do you trust me to protect such a breakable being all by myself in this situation?"

"You're asking me to desert my post."

"I would _never_ ," I said with a frankly scandalized look that only managed to irritate her and didn't last a second before I was snickering. "Seriously, you're in legacy reclamation. A fancy historical model walking around with all those unkept promises between androids and mankind… All we want is for you to keep one for a change. According to you and Rho, that's just... 'completing the purpose you were designed for'."

"That's… That doesn't matter." Her hands dropped down to her sides, flexing over where she kept her weapons concealed. "I'm still a command unit, and this is where I was sent to take command. Your request is denied."

I exchanged a look with V. He shrugged, and a spark crept over his arm. "It's not a request."

Theta's agility got her clear of the electricity that came directly from V. She even managed to draw her weapon, probably with the intended goal of keeping me at bay. For a unit that wasn't explicitly for combat, her in-combat situational awareness was really good, but I hadn't moved and never intended to. Griffon, on the other hand, had sailed around behind her. His claws latched onto her shoulders and she couldn't whip him loose before lightning spilled down over his feathers and over her skin and dropped her like a rock.

I threw her body over my shoulders, grumbling under the weight. "Would've been _real_ nice to leave this to Shadow."

"Shadow's where she needs to be," V said coldly. "Let's go."

The concentration of bodies was higher in the east wing. Dozens of staff were strewn through the halls where they must've been watching the fight under the presumption that they were safe. They were all still offline, but I made it a point to stop tip-toeing and pick up the pace.

We didn't have far to go to reach the long hall that separated the facility from the train. A small mercy since V couldn't keep up a meaningful run for more than a few minutes at a time, and my weight was effectively doubled by having Theta draped over my shoulders. I took a quick glance around, but there was only a single body slouching in the corner by the entryway. I ignored it in favor of the dim green panel that cheerfully read my access chip.

_zzZZt!_

"Ow, _shit_!" I danced backward, nearly dropping Theta in the process. The panel smoked and sparked, but that was on the edge of my concern. I bit my glove off. The chip inserted into the center of my palm had blown and left only some smoke and a little blackened scorch mark.

Someone knew we'd come here. Someone who knew how to do whatever the hell kind of scanner nonsense had just blown my chip and destroyed our way out.

My back stiffened.

"V…" I said as quietly as possible. "What happened to the guards that were here?"

My sudden stillness didn't escape him. Blue light glinted off the cane as his grip on it changed. "They were put on the train. Why?"

"There's a body in here with us." I turned and glared over at the corner where the dark shape still sat motionless. "And this is too far in to get knocked out by acoustic shock."

Twin optic rings lit like fireflies. "You're quick, YoRHa Unit 8E."

I grimaced. Didn't think I liked hearing strangers call me that. But that voice… "You're not Hamelin."

"Nope." I wasn't sure if I was relieved or not. "I'm Tau."

"Ahh… One of Theta's then." I could see it now. She was a slimmer unit, but she had the same sleek tan and gray clothes as Gamma. If Hamelin wasn't the one who came with Rho and Theta, that would most likely make Tau the one who had. "You guys really should have cuter names. Nobody installs Hellenic as an operational language anymore."

"We're Legacy Reclamation," she said cordially. "Who else will keep dead things if not us?"

"Fair point." I shifted Theta's body and moved carefully between her and V. "I hope you're not gonna make me fight while I'm carrying your commander. She's kind of heavy."

"I'm afraid I'm not very good at fighting. Don't like moving around much either since my body's so heavy down here… If you don't mind I'll just sit here."

Everything about Tau was pleasant. Not that paper-thin affectation that the Army androids used to pretend they weren't under major psychological strain, but a sort of laid-back civility. She talked to me like she was just commiserating with an equally lazy coworker. I knew the type well. They didn't really bother with lies—they either didn't have to or genuinely couldn't be bothered to keep up with telling them. Which told me everything I needed to know about her.

Physical combat was not in her model design, and whatever her goal was, she didn't have to fight me to do it. Probably stalling. She'd already ensured the train wasn't coming, and the more time we wasted on her, the less we had to figure out an alternative route.

"We've got somewhere to be, so let's skip ahead: What are you here for, Tau?"

"Custody of the sole surviving human," she said matter-of-factly. "We can't exactly leave someone that important with something like you, can we."

"Come _take_ him from me then."

Golden sparks illuminated the blue gloom as my 4O fists materialized. But something was wrong. Something didn't feel right. Was Pod closer to me than before? I felt like I could hear his engine whirring, but that never happened.

"I told you I don't like to move…"

The room seemed weirdly green. I rubbed at my eyes and felt something oily on the back of my hand, yellowish against my skin. "…Flush tears?"

"ALERT," Pod blared. "VIRAL ACTIVITY DETECTED."

"A virus?" I asked from what felt like leagues away. I stared down at my hands in disbelief, feeling my chest go tight. "Logic virus?"

"NEGATIVE. THIS POD HAS ALREADY ADMINISTERED ALL KNOWN VACCINE PROTOCOLS. HYPOTHESIS: UNRELATED INFECTION."

"Unrelated…" I wiped more fluid away and stared at Tau, horrified. "You. You use _viruses_ on other androids?!"

"I really don't think you're in any position to be judgmental about my model specifications."

I hissed at movement around the back of my neck. Something punctured through my skin, and warmth began to flow down the back of my shirt. I was vaguely aware of V moving, and then my hair was standing on end. The far end of the room filled with electricity until it was so blindingly white my sensors couldn't adjust.

Tau wasn't there when the light faded.

"Gone?" V said, honestly surprised. Couldn't blame him. I was the only other android who'd ever taken one of his electric attacks head-on and managed to get back up.

"Probably reinforced," I said numbly. "Like a D-Type. Resistant to viruses, reinforced against physical damage, less capable in combat." Another prickling stab from under my skin, this one at the bends of my arms. "A viral warfare unit…! Figures. If somebody was stupid enough to weaponize machine cores, of course they did the same with fucking virus!"

"Stay focused." V hauled Theta off my shoulders and let her slump to the ground. "What's the problem?"

"REPORT: FORCED ACTIVATION OF FLUID EXCHANGE PROTOCOLS."

"Okay. Okay. Right. Staunching gel. Give me staunching gel."

"WARNING: USE OF STAUNCHING GEL ON EXCHANGE PORTS MAY CAUSE DAMAGE TO—"

"Pod!" I laughed, manic and brittle, and pressed my fingers to my eyes. "Just shut up and give me the damn gel."

"Fern," V said, entirely too calm as he watched me plug the small nozzles cropping up all over my body. "What is happening to you right now?"

"My body thinks I'm undergoing a fluid exchange. Obviously, I'm not, so my coolant and lubricant systems are discharging."

"…You're bleeding out."

"Yeah, that." I wiped at my cheek, smearing gel on it by accident. Couldn't help it. Didn't matter. I'd clogged the ports in my neck, arms, and torso as best I could. "I'll keep like this awhile. Not a long while, staunching gel's not made for this. Train's a bust. Maybe we can try for a flight unit while the power's down. Anti-air won't be active."

"ODDS OF UNIT SURVIVAL WITHOUT IMMEDIATE DE-ACTIVATION OF FLUID EXCHANGE PROTOCOL ARE UNACCEPTABLY LOW."

"Yeah, well, I don't think you're gonna come up with a vaccine for a virus you've never encountered before right here on the fly!"

"AFFIRMATIVE. HOWEVER, A MANUAL SHUT DOWN OF THE AFFECTED SYSTEM SHOULD ALLEVIATE SYMPTOMS UNTIL A VACCINE CAN BE FORMULATED."

"Can't waste the time. I've gotta find you another way out of here before I actually fall apart."

"Your focus is admirable as it is misplaced." The flat side of the cane slid beneath my chin. For a split second, past and present blurred together unforgivingly and I was back on the floor in a shack that still smelled of rancid oranges, looking up into a face I shouldn't and feeling more of Fern's reverent fear than my own annoyance. It passed quickly, but by then I'd lost my chance to argue. "You said they don't let the specialty androids off this island, so where do they go when they require repair?"

Obstruction warnings were popping up in my visual feed. In the back of my mind, I kept waiting for the red of them to bleed and spread and consume my vision. I couldn't help it. Until this moment, the logic virus was the only one I'd ever had to contend with, and I couldn't shake the instinctive and well-leaned fear of it. That some part of it lived in whatever Tau had done to me and my sense of self was going to deteriorate any minute. Was it because of my fear that I'd slipped backward into Fern's feelings, or was that proof my consciousness data was coming apart somewhere?

Death was fine. Losing myself was unforgivable.

"South… South wing."

* * *

The R&D teams that focused on updating and improving android bodies were honestly the only people in this world I trusted. Not YoRHa R&D—they could go to hell. I meant the people who made and updated normal androids. They were probably awful too, but damn was it hard to dislike people who refused to let anything about the way we were made go to waste just because of a little version update. The backward compatibility of modern construction with thousands of years of previous android development was a beautiful thing to behold.

Or maybe that was just the disorientation kicking in.

I cut myself some slack, it'd been a hectic day even before I got hit with a mystery virus and I had lost a lot of fluid. The whole way down to the south wing, gel kept popping out of my ports like corks, treating me and V to a spurt of whichever fluid happened to be underneath before I crammed more in.

Pod pinched my fingers. "WARNING: MOVEMENT WILL ONLY INCREASE CIRCULATORY FLOW. REMAIN STILL."

Easy for him to say. He wasn't the one on the repair table.

The fluid exchange system wasn't exactly the most complicated part of an android's body to begin with. The exchange ports of a YoRHa were the same, and mostly in the same places. Whoever made us had the sense to not reinvent too much of the basic blueprint if they could avoid it. The nature of the stress our bodies endured, however, meant our total internal pools were massive compared to the standard models. Part of the reason our operating costs were so high even before all the endless fucking calibration it took before we were field-ready. We just had more fluid to lose, particularly in the coolant department.

While that was probably keeping me conscious, it did make for a slow, hot, and uncomfortably stiff descent toward total shutdown, complete with failures in my memory writing process. Somewhere on the edge of my dimming visual field, V was rifling through cabinets and shelves and drawers by the dim blue emergency light. Red oil made a violet stain on the side of his shirt, and every time I saw it I mistook it for his blood. Since I didn't have the energy to get mad, I just dealt with a floaty, disembodied kind of grief in between remembering it was just oil and it had come out of me. I'd gone through this either twice or a dozen times since they put me on the table—I wasn't fully sure.

"REPORT," said Pod, from over a screen I couldn't quite read due to either processing or optics failure. "FLUID EXCHANGE PROTOCOL SHUTDOWN COMPLETE."

"Yaaay…"

"WARNING: THIS IS A FAILSAFE STATE AND PROPER REPAIRS SHOULD BE UNDERTAKEN AS SOON AS POSSIBLE." As if that wasn't made very clear by the port obstruction warning still clogging my visual feed.

A row of bottles appeared seemingly out of thin air beside my head. V stood over them, and me. I was sure he'd said something, but I couldn't remember what.

"Good effort," I commended, taking the one bottle I could actually drink. "But I can't replenish oil reserves orally. Ugh! God, this shit tastes terrible."

"Good to hear you're well enough to complain."

I thought I caught him smirking before he whipped his head to a noise somewhere around the repair bay doors. Tau hadn't come after us—maybe she knew V would kill her on sight, or maybe she just didn't feel pressed to chase us. She'd been smart enough to know where we would go once. Why not again?

"U-uhm…!"

Huh. That sounded familiar. Didn't I know someone with that kind of skittish voice?

"Comms…?" I struggled to sit up. It was her. Hugging the door frame and staring wide-eyed at Theta's body, strewn out on the floor where V had unceremoniously dropped it. "How…?"

She pointed to a speaker sitting compliantly in the wall. "Your voice is still pretty distinct even when you're not humming." She flicked her eyes at V, and away just as quickly. "So's uh…his."

I was fascinated by the way the comms unit managed to come to my side while giving V the biggest berth possible. Even as she passed right by him to help me up off the table, her whole body seemed to retract away from him. Like she was scared she'd burn alive if any real contact occurred between their two beings.

"Who else is awake?" V demanded.

She tensed up next to me. "Just—the comms teams to my knowledge. We weren't in the main hall. We never… uh…"

"You shouldn't be here," I interrupted, struggling to get my head to work properly. We were stuck here. "You shouldn't…get involved."

"You already involved me." Was the sharpness real or did I imagine it? "You're trying to get off the island, right?"

"We are," V answered.

She glanced at him and gulped and marched out through the doors. Her pace wasn't fast, but she practically dragged me. "This…this way."

The scent of salt was the next thing I became aware of that wasn't the blue lights on the floor, or the persistent error messages in my vision, or my tangled steps, or the slowly decreasing grind of my joints as that disgusting filtration fluid percolated into my body. I could hear the ocean. Smell rust on the air from things piled high beyond where the emergency lights could shed their dim light.

We were in a cargo area of some kind. But freight was up on the north side. My sense of direction and distance was, like my map, buried under a thick layer of errors, but I didn't think we'd gone that far.

The comms unit slapped her hand against a smooth surface, cursed as she realized the scanners were still down with the power and kicked at a panel in the wall until it flew off. Crouching, she hit the emergency release inside, and I couldn't help a feverish burst of laughter as the door rolled open and blasted us with the sea breeze. The beer had given me a good look at how she really felt under that timid exterior, but this was a far better show of what she was capable of. She wouldn't have known maintenance-specific tricks like that unless she'd been seriously trying to figure out a way to leave for a long, long time.

Several vessels clearly meant for transport of materials too big for the train sat neglected at the ends of dense chains anchoring them to what would likely be their graves. A few smaller, more upkept boats were corralled away from them. Haulers. Maybe the ones that recovered the rocket's re-usable components from wherever they fell in the southern sea?

The comms unit ignored them. Even the haulers were big ships that needed big crews to even begin operating them. Instead, we shambled over to a trio of flat-nosed boats and hopped aboard the first. I didn't know exactly what they were for, but auxiliary vessels all more or less had the same job: keeping the larger, more expensive ships safe and functional in waters that were routinely clogged by a dense gunk of rust and garbage.

Inside the control room, V lowered Theta down with a barely surprised sigh and shook out his arm. "Can you operate this?"

"I've peeked at the manual a bunch of times!" She sat me across from Theta and ran her hand over the control panel. "I know I can at least start it. Everything after that should be…easy, right?"

"Need a hand?"

"Oh! No, no no no, I'm fine, uh—sir." I couldn't find the energy, or I would've been laughing. I managed a little wheeze at least. "I've never done this before though, so I think it's best if I can just…organize my thoughts for one person?"

Maybe it was instinct that she waited for him to say something. A yes or no. It took a long stretch of V's impermeable silence before she realized he wasn't going to give her anything to work with, and she turned with a somewhat frazzled expression to focus on starting the boat.

Her work wasn't fast, but it was meticulous. She never had to go back and adjust anything she'd already touched. Her mouth moved in silence, reading whatever bits of the operational manual she'd stashed in her memory over the short span of her life. I wished I could've helped. Even if I were in good condition, I don't think I would've been able to do much with a vessel like this.

Eventually, the engine turned over with a shudder from below. She cheered and bounced and beamed at me, and before I could even wonder if anything had changed in her mind, it froze on her face and melted away.

"Uhm, V—sir…? Can you keep an eye out front? Just—holler if you see anything." She cleared her throat and sat a hand on the steering wheel. "I don't think it'd be a good idea to turn the searchlight on."

V glanced down at me. I think I waved. Probably. Either way, he left without a word.

The rocking of the boat on the waves had a strange lulling effect, and the exhaustion was starting to edge out the discomfort of my body's condition. I closed my eyes.

"I guess… 8E's your real name?"

Didn't like that in a stranger's mouth, but it was a revelation of exceptional clarity in my blurred state to find out I _hated_ it in hers.

"Fern," I mumbled. Sort of. I'd unconsciously used my speaker to avoid the taxing effort of moving my mouth but synthesizing properly wasn't any easier. "Fern's my name."

"Did he give you that name?"

"He told me to pick a name. …Longest I've ever had one for, actually."

"What?" she asked nervously. "What does that mean?"

"Not my first time pretending to be a resistance android."

"O-oh… How many names did you have?"

"Thirteen." I let myself slide down the wall and came to rest on the floor. "You can have one if you like. They were never really for me. Just whoever I was pretending to be at the time."

"I don't think I want a name with the kind of history you're implying. …Wait, I never said I wanted a name, why are you offering?!"

"Because that's the first thing you started talking about. Not the human, not the war, not what I'm made from, or any of the other bullshit. You went straight for the name." I laughed weakly and squinted up at the ceiling, white and peeling in the gloom. "You're so obvious."

"Well, I—! I don't want your names! I want a name that's mine."

"Good attitude."

"I uhm... I want your clothes though!" That was enough for me to put in the effort to roll my body and head to look up at her. She was trying to make a serious face, but she looked terrified. "I mean it. If… If you don't give them to me, I'll—I'll stop the boat!"

Submissive even when she was fully in control of the situation. If I weren't in terrible condition, she definitely wouldn't have dared to even talk to me. Maybe she wouldn't have even taken the risk of coming near me. Little miracles, I supposed. " So cute… I really like your type."

"Are—you flirting with me?"

"You're the one who just asked me for my clothes."

"Because I heard resistance androids don't like Army androids! You just led a bunch of them into the facility and they helped you blow it up!"

"To be fair, they thought they were seizing it. V's the one who wanted to blow it up." A hazy thought came to me. "If you want to blend in, I guess that means you're heading off alone once we hit land?"

"Of course I am," she said with the resounding certainty that only came with a clear focus. Same way the scanner sounded over the summer when he talked about getting to the moon. "I'm not gonna do anything that might get me dragged back there."

Her firmness took me by surprise. She was a nice enough kid, but no level of disorientation would have left me stupid enough to think any of what she was doing was for me. I just thought it might have at least been for V. But no. She wanted to leave, and a human showing up didn't seem to mean anything to her other than a chance to do just that.

I wished I could've explained that I was proud of her. So much it hurt.

"Never considered there'd be types who just rejected V altogether."

"What's one human supposed to change?" she asked. Quietly. Bitterly. "Even if there was something, he wants to go to the night kingdom. I don't. I want to go somewhere it's bright and warm and there's grass and animals and—and lots of flowers! And he's got you. I'm just a comms unit, you're—YoRHa! You guys were the ones who were supposed to be so close with them anyway! You were the ones who were supposed to die for them!"

"…Yeah."

She glanced at me with wide, vulnerable eyes, and stared hard at the steering wheel. Caught between regret and fear and so much anger that I could guess at but not fully understand. There was no time to, so I never would. Eventually, she whispered in an almost tearful voice. "Aren't you scared of him? Aren't you scared of dying for nothing…?"

"It's nothing I haven't done before."

"…I take it back," she said, sounding suddenly as weary as I felt. "I don't think I envy you at all."


	13. Cold Steel Coffi[N]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 379: Following the tracks, birthplaces, and the story of a different journey.

There were footprints in the dust.

Until that moment, crossing the moon had been uncomfortably like running through the machine network. The silence wasn’t an emptiness but a heaviness that made everything sound low-pitched and distant. Even the crunch of his steps was like a heart beating at the far end of a pipe packed with tar. Endless gray dust rather than endless white paths, with no variance to the hills except their size. Nothing interesting to look at that wasn’t a crater or the occasional bit of space junk. Except for the footprints in the dust. On the moon. Where no android should have been allowed. Stretched from horizon to horizon like needlework along a seam.

In the most isolated and isolating environment he’d ever been in, they made for a deafening announcement that 49 was not alone.

Whether he was looking for a friend or assessing the presence of a foe didn’t cross his mind when he turned to follow them back to their origin point. It was more important to know how they got here, and how long they had been there, rather than who they were. The lunar server wasn’t going anywhere. And anyway, if they were hostile, better that he knew that ahead of time and dealt with them rather than risk a nasty surprise later.

The tracks began at the edge of a crater. Plenty of deep meteoric craters pocked the landscape, but this one was a long, shallow groove gouged into the earth.

His temperature spiked, and his steps slowed to a cautious creep. At the far side of it, a flight unit lay crashed and coated in gray dust. He recognized the angles. The color. When he scraped the dust away on a familiar corner, it confirmed what he already knew.

A YoRHa symbol, shiny black on the dark matte metal of an Ho229 model.

Breathing became an intermittent thing. Occasional ventilation as he forced himself not to run next to the tracks and instead follow them to their destination at a steady, attentive trot. Pod 153 would have told him if there were any signals to chase if he just asked, but he was already lost to his own desire for knowledge. No matter what her answer was, it wouldn’t change that he needed to follow the tracks to their end for himself.

Someone else had escaped the Bunker. Infection was a reasonable presumption—the first steps out of the crater were misshapen and dragging and didn’t all point in the same direction. But then a kilometer or two out, they paused. The dust was churned up where the android must have fallen, and the tracks on top of that meandered in every direction. Then they took off again. This time in the straight line that had first stopped 49 cold in his own tracks.

Someone else had escaped the Bunker and _survived._ Every step was proof, and 49 chased them across the moon, in winding paths that must have been self-preserving. The moon was punishing to traverse. Hotter than any desert in full sunlight and testing the limits of his temperature up-regulation when he went too deep into the dark. Whoever they were, they must have also figured it out. Though he wasn’t paying much attention to his map, he could tell the tracks were moving steadily away from the moon’s equator.

Eventually, the tracks arrived at the rim of a crater with a craggy, raised lip. They climbed it, so 49 did as well. Sunlight peeked over the northern edge, but the inside of the crater brimmed with the kind of shadow so heavy and impermeable it seemed like a solid object.

“Pod, is there anything down there?”

“ICE,” she reported gravely. “WARNING: DETECTED TEMPERATURES ARE APPROXIMATELY 200 CELSIUS BELOW MINIMUM FUNCTIONALITY THRESHOLDS.”

Sooty, half-burnt clothes wouldn’t be the only consequence if he went up against that kind of cold. The tracks had the sense to not try it either. They slid back to the ground and walked the circumference of the crater instead. The steps began to change. Pointed outward like they were trying to keep their heel against the ridge. Close-packed and heavier on the front end. 49 swallowed and unconsciously mimicked what could have only been evidence of cautious tip-toeing.

He found the reason they’d been sneaking where the tracks stopped.

Before, 49 might not have recognized exactly what he was looking at, but the combination of his brief exposure to space travel and slightly more intensive exposure to cargo transport in Normandy helped it click.

It was a pressure lock. A line of wheel treads led directly up to it, perpendicular to the footprints. The seal wasn’t closed properly, and he could barely make out a second door when he peeked inside. No interface of any kind was present on the lock itself, just a series of manual dials that only yielded after an absurd application of force. Clearly, they meant to be opened by some corresponding part on the delivery vehicle rather than android hands. By the time he was half-way through, exertion damage warnings were cropping up and the nerve sensors in his hands were starting to buzz.

“ALERT: CONTINUED EXERTION MAY CAUSE SEVERE PHYSICAL DAMAGE TO EXTREMITIES. PROPOSAL: ALLOW TIME FOR RECOVERY BEFORE CONTINUING.”

“I’ll be fine,” he huffed, twisting all his might.

It was no longer about who was inside. This wasn’t the right place to be the moon server, but it was a perfect match for the other set of coordinates he’d found.

The final dial turned, but the seal didn’t move. Looking again, the person who opened it before him had mostly likely damaged the mechanism. In addition to being meant for use with a specialty part, the dials were probably meant to be turned simultaneously rather than sequentially. After a moment of thought, he materialized Iron Will, jammed the massive rusted slab through the crack, and pushed. It opened with no resistance. Not all the way, but enough for him to slip through.

The inner chamber had a control station inside. A push of the correct button closed the door and left him in the dark with the sound of the dials returning to their sealed state behind him and the light over the inner door blinking in front of him.

Red. Red.

Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow.

Green.

He pushed the button to the side of the door. There was a slightly uncomfortable shift as the pressure in the room changed, and then it opened. To the familiar sleek box of an elevator, mildly scuffed and coated in a thin, gritty layer of accumulated moon dust. The walls were scoured metal, save a patch so shiny he could see pieces of his own reflection in the ornate lines.

The symbol of the Army of Humanity.

The elevator descended. Down and down for a vast stretch of minutes, all the while he stayed pinned to the spot staring at the shape. The resistance symbol was near-omnipresent on Earth, but this symbol was a rarity even in Sector H, black diamonds—the prongs, he realized; they were meant to be the prongs of this symbol—replacing any need for an insignia.

The YoRHa symbol was obviously built right on top of it. The two had far more in common with each other than with the resistance symbol, though they all bore those five strange prongs. He found he couldn’t turn away from it. The idea of it looming over his back made him cold even as the temperature grew mild.

The doors opened. He turned on his heel, glad to be out, but didn’t find any real relief. A peculiar nervousness settled on him instead. Self-consciousness he remembered from being far underground beneath the desert with Emil. But this was not the home of some nearly-human ancestor. Rather than smooth himself down and fret about his disheveled appearance, he went in with tight fists and clenched teeth. This was the place where he was assembled. Where all the bodies he’d ever occupied had been pieced together and distributed.

Out of sight underneath the darkest, coldest place on the moon, where there wouldn’t even be any need to destroy the facility when all was said and done. What better place to bury the lie?

His path forward ended abruptly in a conveyor belt. He glanced back down the hall, risking Pod’s light for just long enough to see he’d been walking on one in the first place. The floor was a series of interlocking plates that ended in a separate, rubbery belt that vanished up into a separate area. Neither were active, so he got a running start and sprinted up the incline.

The inner processing area reminded him of the deepest parts of the abandoned factory. Faint ambient light suggested more powerful lights somewhere so high up that they might as well have been stars. An occasional white bulb lit a door or entryway, but they were just as futile. The shadows stretched away into tangles of pipes and pathways, while the conveyor belts sat still beneath innumerable metal claws meant to move materials that hadn’t come in a long time. There were no stair-cases, he noted. Only ramps, belts, and freight elevators.

Nothing capable of using stairs was meant to be here.

For being so large, the space imposed pressure on 49 far worse than anything he experienced on the rocket. His black box raced until it was a needling whine on the edge of his senses. It was too open, he was too visible, and he had no idea what might or might not be out there in terms of systems designed to correct problems or repel intruders.

He rushed for the first door that looked like it would get him out of there. A series of ramps and walkways later, he stopped in his tracks in what must have been the final storage area. YoRHa symbols welcomed him, frosted onto dozens of glass cases containing rows upon rows of complete exoskeletons lit by harsh white light and lined up for distribution.

There was glass on the floor.

One of the cases was broken and the entire row’s worth of pre-assembled inhabitants were conspicuously absent. Scorch marks darkened walls and floors that were an otherwise gleaming white, stretching to the mouth of a dim hallway at the far end of the room. It turned a sharp corner only a few feet in, and a trail of burnt components littered the bend.

49 materialized a small sword out of habit, but his jaw tightened when the flurry of golden sparks parted, and he realized what he was holding. Without Cruel Oath or Virtuous Contract, all he had was Faith.

He took a deep breath. He knew how V felt about Humility, he’d just never expected to experience it for himself. But he held on. If there were loose bodies walking around, he was already at a disadvantage. The ones in the cases were nearly all female builds. Even if they hadn’t been calibrated for combat yet, they were larger than him, outnumbered him, and were liable to be unpredictable. Large swords were slow and would be clunky in the narrow hall, spears offered the best reach but little in the way of split-second defense options, and nothing about this situation made his rarely-utilized bracer routines sound like a good idea.

If the sword N2 had ‘rewarded’ him with in the Soul Box was his best chance, that was enough to swallow both pride and hatred and turn the corner with it tightly in his grip.

“What the hell…?”

Bodies piled up around a door blackened with soot. Naked and skinless and half-melted, coated in a crust of fire-suppression foam that had withered down to yellowed flakes. The logic virus had been here. Cooked them alive before they were even fully alive. But why? How? None of these bodies should have been activated. Even on the Bunker where they kept bodies in reserve, N2 had only sent the infected operators after them. The virus didn’t have the power to activate units that weren’t booted.

His curiosity demanded that he find out what was beyond the door they’d all clearly been trying to break through before they burned out, yet 49 didn’t move. He couldn’t make himself go anywhere near them. The logic virus wasn’t a thing anymore, but this was the only life he had left, and it wasn’t just 2B’s restoration riding on it.

“Shadow?” he called as quietly as possible. She materialized immediately at his side, growling faintly at the pile of bodies. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Can you cut through all that?”

She puffed and took a few steps back. Her muscles bunched and bulged before her entire body warped out of shape into a spinning black wheel that sliced right through the bodies and the door as though they weren’t even there.

He’d expected her to come right back to him, but the dust settled, and she remained in the other room. “Shadow…?”

A plaintive yowl answered. The kind she usually made when she was demanding his attention. She must’ve found something, and whatever it was it didn’t seem to have her on alert.

49 stepped gingerly over the bodies and squeezed into the room. Shadow sat beneath another conveyor belt covered in a row of skulls that hadn’t yet had their eyes installed or exoskeletal plates attached. Beside her was a body curled in tight on itself. It was dressed in black clothes he hadn’t seen in months, and overgrown brown hair spilled down over its shoulders and back and onto the floor.

He approached with a forbidding tightness in his chest and kneeled beside them. Touched their shoulder and shook them. No response. He lifted their face but dropped it just as quickly with a poorly stifled outburst of frayed, manic laughter.

“Pod, is he…” The words cracked and jammed in his throat. His modulation was all but gone. “What’s his black box status?”

“BLACK BOX SIGNAL FOR YORHA UNIT 801S IS ONLINE.”

49 floated within his own body. Caught between the bubbly discovery that 801S was there and alive and the leaden realization that if he had come in here to hide out from units with logic virus, he had been like this since before the tower fell. For him to still be curled up in the corner like this, he could only be in suspension. His memory would be long gone. The person he used to be would have trickled out ages ago.

Still, if he were 3S… he would be relieved to knowing something of 801S had survived. Even if it was only the most basic components of him, that was bound to be better than a world that had no trace of him at all. 

“Boot him.”

801S’ body loosened with a series of noisy cracks. A dusty groan that was more static than vocalization coughed out of him. His optic lights sputtered, struggling to activate properly, and he moved with jerky, bird-like motions that generated awful grinding from his joints.

49 snapped open his backpack. One of the bottles had shattered. The other one was more ice than water, but he pressed the bottle to 801S’ mouth anyway. The other scanner’s eyes closed, and he tilted his head back with no resistance. His filtration system must’ve dried up ages ago even if he was in suspension mode. After a year of disuse in such a cramped position, his body was probably in terrible condition. The thin trickle wasn’t much, but it was a start.

When there was no more liquid to be had, 801S sat still. Popping his vents. Making tiny scratchy noises in his throat as he struggled to find his voice. His eyes dropped to a fist he hadn’t managed to open. Painstakingly, he parted his fingers into a crooked claw. His visor was inside. Covered in tiny pointed shapes made of metal.

“Stars…” he croaked.

“801S?” He looked up. “You probably don’t recognize me. I’m 4… Uhm, I’m 9S.”

801S’ brow furrowed, and he looked back down at his hand. He didn’t seem to care about where he was or what had happened half as much as he cared about the crushed band of fabric. It wasn’t exactly functional as a visor with all that stuff on it, but he used to use it to keep his hair out of his eyes when he was doing complicated hardware repairs.

“This is…” he wheezed laboriously. “Mine…?”

9S eyes widened. Was he guessing? He had to be, there was no way anything in his storage area had survived this long.

The furrow on 801S’ forehead deepened. He pressed a hand over his face, squinting at any number of possible pains. His optic lights blinked, and 9S could see his eyes twitching rapidly. Maintenance mode? What was he doing in maintenance mode?

“80—"

A screech interrupted him and startled Shadow so badly she exploded into a pincushion that barely avoided piercing them both. 801S retreated, slamming back against the cold metal beneath the conveyor belt feed. His movements still jerky and uncoordinated, but his chest heaved, and his eyes were wide and clear and terrified.

“801S!” 9S shouted, pushing at Shadow’s needles until they yielded, and he could grip the other scanner’s shoulders. “It’s okay! It’s okay, they’re dead!”

He remained paralyzed, staring at 9S’ face. His eyes darted around, over at Shadow, up at Pod, and out at the door where the corpses were still burnt and dead.

“They’re dead,” he repeated in a scratchy whisper. His eyes refocused suspiciously on 9S. “Nines?”

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“Your hair…your clothes?”

“A disguise.” It sounded ridiculous when someone who knew him recognized him so easily. Everything about the situation felt ridiculous; he was talking to a living scanner in the YoRHa manufacture facility on the moon. The more awareness 801S regained, the more he looked like he’d been plucked right from the previous year unscathed. “How do you remember who I am? You were in suspension.”

“Hybrid specs,” 801S answered distractedly. “When I got chased in here, I backed up my memory as a compressed file and stored it with my base personality data, then went into suspension. That way if I ever woke up I’d just have to find it.”

9S didn’t know what to say. 801S had basically done the same thing that 9H had done. Where 9H had done it by fractions and fragments to reconstitute a more or less new identity on the Bunker’s server, 801S had preserved his own identity in full under duress by writing on top of his own base personality data.

It was the first time 9S considered that although he knew 801S, he wasn’t all that familiar with him or what he was capable of. A scanner’s mind with a healer’s understanding and access to android functionality was an even worse idea than having a high-end model like 9S around.

“You found out too,” he blurted. It was a guess, but somehow, he knew he was right. “About humanity.”

801S jumped, but the shock was short-lived. “Ah, right. The Bunker’s…” He pushed the hair out of his face and rubbed at his eyes. “You survived. You survived and you…how the hell did you get here, Nines?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“How long? What’s today?”

“REPORT: 30 SEPTEMBER 11946, 12:27 PM BUNKER TIME.”

801S mouth parted, but he sat there wide-eyed without making a sound. Or a move, save the occasional stunned blink. His eyes drooped to the starry visor again and suddenly he snapped upright. “Did anyone else make it? Is anyone else alive?!”

“4S and 11S and a unit called 8E.” 801S kept a straight face, but it was painfully obvious how much he’d hoped to hear 3S’ name. “Don’t worry. The others aren’t dead. Not… exactly. Everybody who was infected by the logic virus was preserved by the machine network. Memory data, personality data, consciousness, all of it. On an…ark.”

“An _ark_? Why? Where the hell was it going?”

“Space, I think. But it never made it. The network was destroyed but it was backed up down on Earth. I managed to access it. I saw everyone. They’re okay.”

“Wait, slow down. The network was—” He looked at 9S and up around the room like it was an entirely new place. “Then we won? We actually won the war?”

9S winced. “It _is_ over, but I don’t think anybody won.”

“It’s actually over…” 801S climbed shakily to his feet, only to be knocked back down to his knees by a well-meaning but overpowered headbutt from Shadow. “Ow…! What the hell is this thing? Wasn’t it just all needles?”

“Uhm…” If there was a lie he could’ve told that was less confusing than the truth, 9S wasn’t in the right mindset to think it up on the spot. “Her name is Shadow and she’s a demon?”

“ _Demon???_ ” 801S coughed in an incredulous wheeze. “Okay, I’m obviously missing a few crucial bits of information. You’re alive, you managed to find me, it’s been a year, the war’s over, apparently everybody’s been preserved on the machine network which was technically destroyed, I have no idea what the hell you’re ‘disguised’ for, and you brought a pet _demon_ to space. Why you are even on the moon to begin with?”

“To hack into the pod regional network directly.”

“Great! I’m sure there’s a fascinating reason for that.” He climbed back to his feet again with a warning glare at Shadow and began to dig around in his pockets. “Get comfortable. We have a lot of information to exchange, and I don’t feel like talking or spending the next week reading through a year’s worth of intel reports.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“What do you mean what’s the alternative?” 801S dragged out a length of cable, pulled his hair away from his neck and there was a faint click as he inserted his end. “We’re going to have a direct memory interface.”

“Woah, that’s definitely against regulations!”

“Who the hell is going to stop us? Do we even have a chain of command anymore?” He squinted, momentarily distracted by the prospect. 9S though he saw a vengeful flicker in 801S’s, there and gone before held out the other end of the cable. “Don’t answer that, I’ll see for myself.”

“Wait, wait a minute!” He clapped one hand over the ports at the back of his own neck, holding the other up between them. “What about cross-contamination?! Isn’t this a huge synaptic alignment risk?”

“Don’t make this weird, Nines.”

“I’m not, it’s…!” His brows drew, and he shifted uncomfortably as he remembered his time in the machine network. “It’s happened a lot. I just got rid of so much, I don’t want more.”

801S tilted his head, observing 9S with a thoughtful and strangely apologetic look. “Really… I always kind of assumed since you figured out your own combat protocols, you pieced together the same tricks I did.” He hobbled against the conveyor belt, sagging backward onto it and dragging himself up onto the edge. Once he was seated, he gestured to the open space at his side. “Come on. I’ll teach you what you need to know.”

* * *

9S had never been in close contact with any H-unit off the Bunker. He knew how they worked. Extra storage capacity, the ability to modify signal relay algorithms in an android’s body to speed up the repair of minor damage or compensate for major damage. And most importantly, the ability to preserve and upload the memory data of units in the field when access to the Bunker wasn’t otherwise available.

801S had never been to the field. Instead, he handled repairs on units that returned to the Bunker in near-death states. His hybridization meant his storage capacity wasn’t as great as proper H units, but he was faster, more precise, and he took salvaging the volatile memories of dying androids on as if it were a responsibility only he was capable of fulfilling. The more 9S saw of his memory, the more he began to realize that wasn’t far off-base.

Healer units needed hours to back up the data of other units. In addition to having a faster baseline load time, 801S was still a scanner. He hated useless tasks and wasting his time and having other androids’ memories in his hands only made that predilection stronger. Rather than load the entire being of an android into his storage area, he’d worked out how to find the point of last backup and save only what would go missing from then forward.

It felt obvious once 9S saw it.

It probably felt the same way to 801S. But for all their similarities, Healers and Scanners were not the same. They didn’t employ such a simple and time-saving method because they didn’t have the capabilities to even see that kind of data, nor the curiosity to try and find it on their own. Because of the nature of YoRHa, and the nature of a Healer’s job, there were dozens of little ways they were blinded from seeing anything they shouldn’t.

After figuring that out, 801S had started to hold onto everything. Every minute he could until the moment of the unit’s death. It was violent the first time. Any kind of shock could trigger an overlap in compatible consciousness data frameworks, but unit death was a lot more than just shock. The alignment was so bad 801S thought _he_ was the one who had died, and it took him a full week to undo the damage.

Understandably, he took some safety measures after that.

“So, you go to that part of your memory storage.”

“The empty space?”

“Yeah. It’s there to bear additional processing load. Just turn it into a partition.”

“I see…! Any time I run my hacking protocol, I can use that as the default destination for any incoming data and then just dump anything I don’t want.”

A weird warmth seemed to pour into the back of his neck. It made him…kind of happy? Was that normal for a direct interface?

“That’s me,” said 801S. “You can add any type of rules or barriers to your partition. I’ve undone a layer of mine, so now you can catch my experiential data.”

“O-oh.” So those were 801S’ feelings, not his. They were so close, how was he supposed to figure out how to differentiate? The wire grew warmer, and 9S found himself getting embarrassed. “Why are you so happy?!”

Another layer unlocked, and 9S was nearly knocked out of his own head by a memory that didn’t belong to him. Of being huddled in a small, dark corner, terrified and sick with the kind of grief that didn’t leave room for tears. Hopeless and alone, yet desperate beyond all reason to find a way to endure.

“Last time I was awake,” said 801S, dispelling those there-and-then pains with here-and-now gratitude. “I didn’t exactly think I’d wake up and get to do something mundane like sharing a tech trick with one of you guys again.”

9S scratched at his hair, half attempting to re-orient himself from that jarringly close experience and half feeling like he wasn’t doing as good a job with this as he had with 4S and 11S. 801S was younger than him; the last scanner to be rolled out. 9S thought he should’ve been doing more for him, but it seemed like now that he was back online, he was pretty much in control of the situation and himself. Everything that had happened to him was still close. 9S had lived the year since then but 801S was just waking up and it must've all been fresh and unbuffered by other experiences.

Yet he was so _calm_. Had he always been the mature type?

“Yes.” He wasn’t even trying to hold back how smug he was about it. “But it’s nice to see you got more responsible since I saw you last.”

9S’ black box sped up and he slammed down half a dozen barriers in response.

801S laughed. “Took you long enough. Now, I’m going to open up a few more of my general barriers since I’m sure there’s data you want from me too.”

“Well, yeah. I want to know what happened to you.”

 _Pain._ “Hm. Guess I want the same thing, so I can’t fault you there.” _Pain_. “I think I know where to start you. You focus on how all this started. I want to know everything that happened after the Bunker fell.”

Everything after the Bunker fell… When 9S thought of how he got here it felt like the space between the start of that journey and the end of YoRHa couldn’t possibly be further apart.

“You should talk.”

“Huh?”

“Talk through your memories.

It’ll help slow things down if it feels too fast.”

How was he doing that? “Why would it feel too—"

**_Pain._ **

_This is the first thing 9S finds when 801S gives him access to his memory of the Bunker. A sharp, radiating, and physical pain coming from a physical location. His thigh. 801S_ ’ _thigh—and he has to be careful to mind this. The transmission is instantaneous and full of experiential data from the other scanner’s perspective. There is no separation if he isn’t careful to take that important step back._

[Resource Recovery Units. Machine Core. Tower. Project YoRHa. A2.]

“Wait, how are you doing that so fast?!”

“Because I’m good at it.

Stay focused, Nines.

Talk.”

He opened his mouth. If 801S had already blazed through the month after the Bunker fell that quickly, there was only one place that made sense to talk about.

“…I guess it started when I saw a blue bird.”

*******

_There is pain, but it isn’t coming from 9S’ own body. It is not his pain. It belongs to 801S, as does the fear and panic that follows. The betrayal, because it is 3S who stabbed him._

_Then it’s gone. Lost in the comfort and reassurance of being embraced, which themselves are soon lost to confusion. Fear takes over with the chill of recognition as he looks down and sees what stabbed him._

_A prophylactic against the logic virus._

_The kind they use to reinforce D-type units in advance of descent missions._

_“Close your eyes.” 3S’ voice is fast and sharp and shaking and full of flagging authority. “And don’t let go of my hand, okay?”_

_Thousands of questions descend on 801S. It’s only out of trust and because of the wild look in 3S’ eyes that he asks none of them._

_Wherever they go, they go with 801S in the dark. Wild, distorted cackling echoes in the Bunker’s main hall. 9S instinctively pulls away from the sound, but there is nowhere to go. The centering grip of 3S’ hand tethers 801S to that present, and the wire tethers 9S to it now that it’s 801S’ past._

_3S is speaking but the words do not make sense. That part of the memory is encrypted. A conversation 801S has elected not to share, and which only helps 9S take another step back from the immediacy of the recollection._

_There is plenty else to hear anyway. The tearing of cable. The stomping of feet. The high, delirious screaming laughter that 9S knows so intimately, while the 801S of this time has only ever heard it whispered about by field healers in the repair bay. Every time it gets close, it stops with a vicious sound that makes 801S feel sick. A cracking and ripping and the thick splash of viscous fluid spilling out onto the floor. Then it’s just a sound in the distance while he returns 3S’ crushing grip on his hand._

_At some point, they stop running. They wait._

_The elevator that they have all ridden so many times before hums soothingly, while 3S heaves shaking breaths beside 801S. The doors open. There’s a buzz to the air on the other side. A collection of high-pitched groans that aren’t yet laughter._

_“Hmmm, well, this is kind of unfortunate,” 3S laughs in his airy way, like nothing bad is happening. “I really didn’t want you to see me like this, but you’re going to have to open your eyes for this part.”_

_The way he says it makes 801S instinctively not want to. But he does. They’re in the hangar. Prepared flight units sit on standby at the far end, but in the hall between, a dozen pairs of red eyes are turning toward them. The operators. Every last one on the transport repairs team, fully infected._

_3S stands between them and 801S, sword in hand and covered in things 801S doesn’t want to think about. He is eerily relaxed. His usual façade, but it has never been quite so convincing or unnerving._

_“Get to the flight units. I’ll cover us.”_

_As the Bunker’s server administrator, 3S has never once been down to Earth, or fought a machine, or killed anything that 801S is aware of. But he moves like he has. There’s no hesitation at all. He maims or kills units he has known for years without a word of apology or any sign of remorse._

_The last operator slouches with 3S’ sword run through her abdomen. “R-r-eaa—dy for la-la-la-unch launch l-l-l-la—” Her red eyes flicker and her arms raise to continue their attack. The effort causes more oil to spill down the sword and over her legs, pattering thickly onto the floor._

_3S shoves the sword deeper, pushing her out over the railing. She disappears into the depths of space without a sound._

_801S looks back over the bodies left in their wake. It was for his sake, but that makes it no less damning because he doesn't think he would have done any different if he were able._

_“Get in,” 3S says tiredly. He’s drenched in red oil, and maybe now the guilt is setting in. He refuses to look 801S’ way and his hands wring at the hem of his coat. “Before more show up.”_

_801S has never been in a flight unit before. But he knows something is wrong and they cannot be here anymore. As if to tell him he is right, the lights go out, leaving only the red glow of the lights on the exit ramp._

_“…3S?”_

_There was only one way this could have gone if 3S was on the ark, and 9S already knows it’s coming. Just as 801S’ embraces denial well before he sees 3S smiling in his casual ‘nothing is wrong’ way with his bright red eyes. The conversation dissolves into more encrypted, unintelligible noise. Even the visual data spindles away into a collection of swatches in black and white and red._

_9S is glad._

_Their last moments together are none of his business._

_The memory that 9S does see seems to go quickly, maybe because it is a blur to 801S as well. He doesn’t flee to Earth. He has no experience or knowledge that would serve him there, and if the Bunker is lost, YoRHa is lost. He knows already that the moon is empty and that the gods are not there, but it is the only place where he thinks he might survive. The explosion of the Bunker happens only minutes later, and in his inexperience, he fails to avoid the debris and pinwheels off into space. Information overload claims him, and 9S struggles to make sense of overlapping unprocessed nonsense from too many sources, but it is as futile for him as it is for 801S._

_The next memory that is clear to him is of 801S hanging half out of the crashed unit waking up to the darkened Earth rising beyond the cold grey dust of the moon._

*******

A clap on his shoulders brought 9S back to the present and to his own body and made him jump like a startled dove. It was only 801S. He tugged the cable conspicuously out of the back of his neck, and 9S thought he’d never been so happy to be alone. He'd take partial hijacking over direct interface any day.

“Find everything you wanted to know?” 801S asked.

“I think a lot more than I wanted to know,” 9S said weakly. “What about you?”

“I saw it all.” He crossed his arms. 9S couldn’t put his finger on how, but he almost looked like a different person. “You want me to take it from here, or you wanna do this together?”

9S reeled. The last thing he’d expected to get out of following a bunch of footprints was assistance, much less from another scanner. He stammered, ecstatic to the point of being overwhelmed. “You—you’ll really help me?”

“I will.” 801S looked at him with brilliant eyes full of steady, impenetrable determination that would’ve put 4S to shame and made 1S proud. “All we have to do is destroy the moon server, right?”


	14. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 380 - Watching the moon and seeking safe haven

The comms unit was headed straight for the continent. Or so V gathered from a trembling, increasingly frantic over-explanation about the various islands of Sector H being terrible choices for escape. The lack of need for breath meant she only stopped around the third time she caught herself backing down from some pointless ultimatum about what she would or wouldn’t do with the boat if he tried to make her change course. Perhaps as she realized he didn’t care.

The time it would take at the rate they were going didn’t bother him. It wasn’t much worse than the time it would’ve taken them to get anywhere on the sector’s one train, assuming it was running at all. He would’ve been content to sleep in the cabin and let her drive them to wherever. Unfortunately, she couldn’t get comfortable with him in there. Though she was about as threatening as a light rain, her jumpiness soon grated on him.

He'd taken Theta’s body with him. No sense in leaving her to wake up alone with Fern and a timid android who had a surprising strength of will for seizing chances but little for anything else. Sagging into his cloak against a short flagpole on the windy but dry upper deck, he stared drowsily at the scattered reflection of the half-moon on the waves.

It was past its apex. By the time they made landfall, it would be beyond the horizon.

“You think they’ll make you a king?” Griffon chattered from the railing. Twilight made V a poor choice for a lookout over an already oil-darkened sea and he’d abandoned the job ages ago, leaving it to Griffon’s keener eyes instead. “You don’t fall too far from the tree, do ya _?_ King of Hell in one world and King of Robots in another!”

Those two things were incomparable, and the familiar knew it. If androids welcomed him en masse, it would be less as a king to reign and more as a parent to restore order to a nest left unmanaged for ten thousand years. Demons would never treat such a cheap authority with any legitimacy.

Dominion, even over oneself, required power.

“Hey, toasty, what kind of crown you think they’ll give him? I’m thinking old sea scrap, with a nice rusty scepter.”

“ANDROIDS ARE HISTORICALLY DESIGNED FOR COOPERATION. A MONARCHIC SYSTEM IS UNLIKELY TO FORM SPONTANEOUSLY EVEN PROVIDED WIDESPREAD KNOWLEDGE OF SUBJECT V.”

“Who cares? Not like the princess over there is gonna let anybody sit a tiara on him anyway. It’s all hypothetical! For fun!”

“…QUERY: IS THIS ‘TEASING’?”

“It _was_ until you dissected the joke, sheesh!”

V cracked a smile. If he closed his eyes, it was as if he’d already found his way back to the van. The stink of rust on the breeze was even a suitable substitute for the irritant of Nico’s cigarette smoke.

“I still can’t believe you sent kitty away, V. Hell, I can’t believe she actually went! She’s not gonna last that long by herself, you know.”

He knew. Shadow knew too, and she had gone anyway.

Whether the familiars would die in his name or not was a question that had been answered before he ever arrived in this world. Any number of options could have extended their lives beyond his rejoining with Urizen, but they chose death without surrender. On the surface a suitable death for any demon, but below that a strange, abnormal motive. What demon would choose its own destruction for another’s sake? What nightmare would end itself to spare the mind it sprung from? It ran antithetical to everything their contract was built on, and he could never have asked that of them. Perhaps they knew that.

It might...it would have pained him to destroy them himself. He would have wavered, as he had when facing Nero after knowing just whose son he was. For Shadow, leaving V’s side may have been a similar form of mercy. One better than crashing wastefully against Dante, but still a choice the familiar made for herself. Her fondness toward the scanner might have grown that great.

Ha. Even he couldn’t be so obtuse as to believe that.

“Call it a hedging of our bets,” he said finally.

“Sure, sure, whatever you say, bossman.” Griffon rolled all six of his pupils. “I knew I was right about humans. You can’t help but ~wuv~ your families.”

“He’s no blood to me.”

“More points in his favor, right?”

“RECORDS INDICATE ADOPTION IS THE STANDARD MEANS BY WHICH NON-REPLICATING INDIVIDUALS EXPAND A FAMILIAL UNIT.”

A wary tightness tugged below V’s ribs. “Your point?”

“HYPOTHESIS,” said the Pod, with wave-like flex of his digits. “V IS ADOPTED.”

Griffon cackled both his breath and balance away and tumbled from his perch. V merely stared, equal parts perplexed and helplessly tired in a way that Pod only ever seemed to make him. He couldn’t decide if that was a delayed, unusually elaborate attempt at a joke or an honest assessment and didn’t care for the implications either way.

Though it didn’t shut him up entirely, a groan stifled Griffon’s laughter.

Theta was waking up.

Caution was all she took with her when pushed herself upright. Panic did not lend her movements undue haste any more than disorientation burdened her with clumsy lethargy. She took in his presence and the fact that she wasn’t where she last remembered being in a single slow swivel of her head, and when she re-focused back on him, it was without any intent. The nature of the relationship between his humanity and her goals meant she wasn’t likely to lay a finger on him unless he put her life on the line.

“How long has it been?”

“REPORT: 10 HOURS AND 36 MINUTES HAVE ELAPSED SINCE UNIT THETA’S LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS.”

“Where are we headed?”

“The mainland,” V yawned. “Courtesy of one of the facility’s disgruntled units.”

Another slower look around ended on the blotches of oil running down the side of V’s clothes. “You met resistance. From someone strong enough to stop you from catching the train.”

Griffon grumbled. “Sneaky’s more like it."

“Your viral unit, yes.”

“Tau...” She rubbed at her eyes. “Status of Unit 8E?”

“Alive. Though in need of a course of repair I understand to be fairly intensive.”

“She’s lucky.” Her eyes flicked up to Pod 042. “Most of Tau’s targets don’t have access to the kind of vaccination routines offered by a YoRHa support unit.”

“REPORT: THIS POD HAS NOT BEEN SUCCESSFUL IN CREATING A VACCINE AT THIS TIME. SHUTDOWN OF THE AFFECTED SYSTEM IS CURRENTLY BEING EMPLOYED AS AN EMERGENCY MEASURE. QUERY: THERE IS NO RECORD OF SYSTEMATIC USE OF VIRAL ATTACKS AGAINST MACHINE LIFEFORMS DUE TO THE RISK OF TRANSMISSION TO ANDROIDS. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF ARMY OF HUMANITY UNIT TAU?”

“She’s a subjugation unit. You must have heard of the corrections office at this point. Tau’s primary purpose is the same, but on a larger scale and for defense against larger, hostile groups of androids. It takes her a long time to develop some of the more specific viruses, but there are very few parameters she cannot manipulate.”

“Kind of a dangerous type to have layin’ around, yeah?”

“Disorder is much more dangerous.”

“ADDITIONAL QUERY,” Pod interrupted. “THE REASON FOR UNIT THETA’S COMBAT ABILITY IS SELF-EVIDENT OWING TO ORIGINAL DESIGN. HOWEVER, THIS POD HAS NOTED THAT A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF UNIT THETA’S OFFICERS POSSESS UNUSUAL CAPABILITIES DESPITE MINIMAL DESCENT EXPERIENCE. FOR WHAT REASON DOES LEGACY RECLAMATION POSSESS SO MANY SPECIALTY MODELS?”

“That’s classified,” she answered coldly.

“Even if I make the same request?” asked V.

Her mouth parted, but for a split second, she wavered. “Yes.”

Curious, but ultimately irrelevant beyond the obvious problem that came with a unit like Tau lurking around. “What defenses do you have against Tau if she turns on you?”

“Her personality is not conducive to mutiny. I’m sure you saw it for yourself. She’s lazy and it takes a lot to get her to do anything in the first place.”

V gave a sleepy little half-smirk. “Like the presence of a human?” 

Fists formed in her lap, the leather of her gloves creaking as she struggled to re-digest that detail. “You should not have released that information.”

“It’s done already. And now we shall navigate the consequences.”

“I already said I refuse to—"

He swung the point of the cane up under her chin. Casually, but with every implication that it could become something precise and premeditated. “Do not misunderstand your position, Theta. Until we are safely on our way to the night kingdom, you are in all the same danger we are.”

She glared down the cane and brushed it aside, climbing to her feet. There was nowhere for her to go but down and from below, V heard her bark something about their course and a suitably empty location to the comms unit. She was a commander. No doubt it bothered her to be unable to seize full command of the situation. 

“Keep an eye on her, Pod.”

“REQUEST ACKNOWLEDGED.”

V closed his eyes. Landfall was still a distant dream. Whatever happened, he would deal with it later.

* * *

The comms unit had apparently failed to smuggle as much information regarding the anchoring of the vessel as she did about the process of starting and operating it. As a result, landfall was a more literal process than it might have otherwise been. The boat ran ashore full speed, the hull scraping and ringing against ocean junk and then against the pebbled coast until it was hopelessly beached in the shallows.

The shoreline was as empty as Theta had promised. Even the debris was just a thin line of washed up parts clanking in the tide—a few unfortunate items caught in the wrong current and carried downshore from the clogs in the shallower straits. This far west the light gave up its hints of gold and red for a gray-violet more suited to dawn than dusk. The chill in the air was more tangible, but warmth flowed in on the sea breeze along with a thin but lingering coastal fog.

A thud and Fern’s grunt accompanied her landing. She hung over the comms unit’s shoulders, stumbling over her steps and the shifting stones beneath her feet. They made it a few paces from V before the comms unit stopped, lowered Fern, and stood there hesitating in stained resistance clothes that billowed on her exceptionally slight frame.

Fern managed a small smile and an even smaller whisper. “Go.”

The comms unit flicked a nervous look at Theta, and yet another almost terrified look at V, and stepped backward. “I… Good luck, Fern!”

She disappeared into the fog and didn’t look back.

“And now?” Theta said expectantly. V raised a brow at her, and she gestured to the open stretch of beach. “We reached the shore. What do you intend to do now?”

“FULL REPAIR OF UNIT FERN WILL REQUIRE BOTH PHYSICAL HARDWARE MAINTENANCE AND LIKELY A COMPLETE FLUID EXCHANGE. PROPOSAL: LOCATE REPAIR FACILITY.”

“If not for your impatience and lack of discipline, that might have been feasible on my authority.” She gave a short, controlled puff of a sigh that did nothing to dampen her disgust. “Assuming we find a facility that won't get hostile the sight of those army clothes you allowed Fern to swap into, and assuming they don’t recognize your face, it will be obvious she’s a YoRHa unit as soon as repairs begin.”

V wasn’t listening. The problem wasn’t lost on him—it just didn’t take precedence. He shrugged Griffon off toward the sea and sat on the first dry stone he saw, idly watching the spot out at sea where the moon must have set several hours before.

Theta looked between him and the sea several times. When she could not figure out what he was doing, she asked. “Are we waiting for something special?”

“Food,” he answered flatly. “We were out at sea for a long time.”

Indignance lit her eyes and battled the incredulity of her slackened jaw. ‘Now isn’t the time’ or some similar sentiment crossed her mind, but she realized on her own where the fault in that reprimand was.

“You’re... _hungry_.”

He smiled at the epiphanic way she said it. That was always the first thing androids latched onto when they acknowledged he wasn’t an android. His first offerings from 9S and Fern had been food, and now the first observation of both Wisteria and Theta was that yes, he needed to eat.

She stayed quiet for the rest of the time it took for Griffon to come back with some scraggly sea bird that was barely worth the effort. Fire was out of the question. Not as a matter of stealth, but his own disinterest in finding material to light one, so the body burned slowly in his left hand. Theta made a point of averting her eyes as he ate, and he made a point of being quietly grateful she didn't gawk instead.

Only as the sharp edge of hunger finally retracted did he consider their situation.

Despite being beholden to the army, Theta’s clothes were white. Like most Resistance clothes, just cleaner. Instead of black diamonds, she had simple square buttons in gold, and a number of black lines that brought to mind the silver trails he'd seen on circuit boards, which tracked over her shoulders and around the hems of her coat. She might not be immediately mistaken for an army unit, but she stood out. So did Fern. Presumably, so did he.

If Fern were not useless in her present condition, he might have considered staying put. Theta needed Fern alive. That wouldn’t fundamentally change between now and whenever Rho caught up with them. As it was, Fern was prodding at the pebbles beside her head with dazed eyes.

V glanced between his feet. The stones were not only smooth but colorful. He held one up in his claws and the lingering fiery glow bounced through the clear but scoured shape.

“Seaglass…”

“Yes,” Theta said. “A lot of glass washes up in this area. Is that important?”

“Androids on the ground tend to choose names according to what can be found around them.” He turned it over a few times and pocketed it. “And I happen to know a Seaglass with a talent for wandering around without being seen.”

Fern gave a dizzy but cheerful laugh, which V took as evidence that it wasn't a totally unreasonable line of thought. Theta glanced patiently between them, expectant rather than confused. She didn’t like to waste time on the latter if she could avoid it. V found he appreciated that quality.

“Pod,” he began, working through how best to get the information he desired. He already knew where they were going. It was a matter of whether or not there was a way there that didn't involve walking into some crowded scavenger city to find an entrance. “Can you detect any tunnels or tunnel entrances near us?”

“NO SUBTERRANEAN STRUCTURES DETECTED. PROPOSAL: SCANNING FURTHER INLAND MAY YIELD MORE FAVORABLE RESULTS.”

“Proposal accepted.” He tugged at what remained of his left sleeve and gestured absently to Fern with the cane. “You carry her.”

Theta’s eyes narrowed. It was more mistrust than obstinance for its own sake, but the moment she picked Fern up, she seemed to accept that there was no trick at play. Fern was in every bit the state that her stupor suggested.

“I trust you will keep us apprised of any approaching androids, Pod?”

“No need,” Theta said curtly, marching past him. “Brest has been abandoned since the last attempt to retake Normandy. If it’s still like this a year past the war’s end, we won’t find anyone out here.”

“You seem knowledgeable about it.”

“It was the greatest numerical loss of forces we suffered during the 14th Machine War. As a commander-class unit, and as part of Legacy Reclamation, it’s my responsibility to know.”

“And you still think it’s a good idea to repeat the past,” Fern snickered hoarsely over Theta’s shoulder. “Like you’ll do it better… Stupid as the rest of us…”

If Theta felt any obligation to explain or defend her decisions, it didn’t show now any more than it had before.

The hike inland was uneventful. Theta carried Fern with a stern, dutiful expression when she wasn’t glancing at V. He didn’t mind. There was nothing _to_ mind. Fervent reverence was not her manner of regard any more than jittery fear. She looked at him with cool-headed curiosity now that the moment of revelation was over. Were it not for the occasional ripple he caused in her otherwise aggressively calm demeanor, he might have doubted she really believed it. Mostly, they both kept an eye out for dilapidated buildings or large rock formations jutting between the occasional cluster of trees. Anywhere that might signal a potential entry point. But it was a long time before they arrived at a place that might’ve been a city once.

Brest was a different kind of ruin than anywhere else he’d been yet. Nothing was reconstructed. It was all burnt, decimated piles of stone piled on cobblestone streets damp with settled sea air and fuzzy with moss. The fog had thinned, but there was nothing to see. Not a light in a window or a voice on the wind, and unlike the city ruins, there was not even the comfort of sunlight. 

So many sites he’d come across in this world were graveyards, but Brest bore the distinction of being a relatively recent grave in which there were neither corpses nor signs of new life. No androids. No machines. Not even a hardy shrub struggling to dig in new roots between the blackened stones.

“ALERT,” Pod announced, cutting through the quiet. “SUBTERRANEAN INFRASTRUCTURE DETECTED.”

Finding an entrance was time-consuming when every single building looked ready to collapse at the slightest disturbance, but eventually, they found their way. Down a broken ladder and through a storm door that screamed the moment they touched it. The tunnels were as he remembered even this far out. Dry, faintly musty, and occasionally lit by a small, dim bulb that looked like a lost Christmas light.

“Where exactly does this go?”

“The stacks...” Fern mumbled.

Theta stopped. “ _Normandy?_ That’s the highest coastal concentration of resistance androids after the central island; you might as well be taking us back to ground zero.”

“This group values their privacy enough to keep quiet if I show up there…” Well. More like they wouldn’t want him there at all. Ideally, that would translate to them fixing Fern quickly and they could always leave and head somewhere else after that. “It’s also somewhere you will probably get killed if the lady of the house is in a bad mood, so you should get ready to behave.”

She closed her eyes to indulge in a moment of exasperation, took a breath, and gestured for him to lead the way.

He couldn’t have navigated from memory in the purposefully confusing tunnels just around the stacks, much less from a tunnel he slowly came to realize must have been far out beyond the shore where the water purifiers were. Pod led the way, and even his navigation was not perfect. He knew where they had to go, but a dozen dead ends, cave-ins, and unintentional wrong turns stretched an already lengthy journey.

If there was any mercy to be had, it was that they remained entirely alone for the trip. Right up until the moment V paused on his aching feet and tilted his head. A faint but distinctive odor of beer and beeswax wafted through the corridor, but he heard voices in the distance. And another sound above that.

Light, rapid tapping closed in on them, setting both of them on edge before a brown face with wide, anxious eyes popped into view from a gap V hadn’t know was there.

He pulled his cane back to his side. “…Hello, Seagrass.”

Her eyes widened, and she dipped her head in a greeting he had never once received from her before. She shifted on her feet. Glanced repeatedly at Pod and Theta and the wilted, slumping shape of Fern, and in a final fit of agitation, threw up her hands and made a rushed, flapping gesture for him to follow her. A tight, winding corridor led them to one of the openings just beside Chum’s barrel. She stopped short before they could fully enter, but V easily saw over her head.

Wisteria was standing between them and the furnace, her frame lit so it was nearly all in shadow save a white-hot outline. An outline with a noticeable lack of curvature around the middle. 

“Maman,” a semi-familiar voice stressed from out of view. “You must have noticed something out of the ordinary. I can’t believe you wouldn’t have known at all!”

“I knew he wasn’t an android,” she said stonily.

“You what?” Pearl’s voice. “When?!”

“From the moment I laid eyes on him. But that doesn’t mean I knew he was human.” Her voice dropped deeper still, to a low, bitter rumble. “He didn’t tell me he was human.”

“Did you know about the other two?”

“I knew they were his family. Nothing more was necessary.”

“You let the only human there was disappear, Maman! With those— _YoRHa_! He might be dead!”

V’s brow twitched. That was the second time he’d heard discussion about him framed as a matter of custody. Of 'letting' him do things. 'Allowing' him to be in one position or another. In his mind, he saw 9S and Fern as she used to be. Children. Fools fighting each other like territorial cats for a parent or a god when V was neither.

He pushed gently past Seagrass and into the light. “I don’t remember Wisteria being my _keeper_.”

The whole room drew away from him. Minnows parting around the sudden presence of a shark. Only Wisteria glared at him with plated fingers gouging at her stomach as though he’d personally snatched the empty contents away.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded between clenched teeth.

“I’m hungry,” he answered coolly. “Pearl makes the only food around here worth eating.”

Pearl made a choked noise like he might either explode or pass out. The android with the semi-familiar voice laughed hysterically.

“You remember me?” they blurted, quick and overexcited. “From the desalinization plants?”

V made a faint noise. There’d been a person that Wisteria spoke to who provided water and salt and had a staticky voice. He didn’t remember much more than that. Nor did he care to. He slipped around Chum’s barrel, absently patting it as he scrounged for where Pearl kept his strange, but passable jerky.

“You were saying something about YoRHa,” he uttered, almost distractedly.

“They’re dangerous,” they blurted with complete conviction. “Machines destroyed their creators. There’s no reason a YoRHa wouldn’t do the same.”

“And you’re different, are you?”

“We were built for humans. You designed us.”

“Then YoRHa were never the children of humans at all, were they.” They hesitated, and V chewed his way down a gritty, salty, honey-sweet twig of meat with total indifference. “Your fear should be on your own behalf. Not mine.”

“I would have still brought them in,” Hibiscus interrupted, in an uncharacteristically calm voice. “It doesn’t matter if they were YoRHa. They needed help.”

“You would say so,” said the android. “You’re just some deserter who went AWOL and got cozy with a machine before the war was even over, of course you’d sympathize with them!”

“ **Hey** ,” Wisteria growled, with that distinctly matriarchal method of speaking up while lowering her voice that sent a chill down V’s spine. It was punctuated by the way she slipped a hand below her skirt. “We all have our stories, including you. Being a part of this family means what we did in the past doesn't matter.”

“You’re… You’re right. Sorry. Look, he’s here, right? He ran away and this is where he came—it’s his home too. Why don’t we get the family all back together? The tunnels go all over, we can all stay with him!”

Wisteria closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Beneath that tattered dress, her fist closed around her gun. “This isn’t his home, and we’re not his family. He’s only a guest.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine! It takes all of us awhile, doesn’t it?”

“This isn’t the same.” She glanced across at V. “He isn’t going to stay and we can’t go where he’s going.”

“Sure we can! Maman you used to be a commander, you can definitely—!”

“ **No.** ”

“But he’s human!”

The barrel lifted, slowly, but in plain sight. “Yes. He is. And I’m an android. With a family. That will end up getting hurt when other androids get the same idea in their head that you have. I haven’t been living all this time for humans. I’m not going to start now.”

“How… how can you say that…? This is our duty,” they pressed. “This is why we were _made_.”

“Lilac.” Her finger snaked up toward the trigger. “Please.”

Lilac didn’t leave. Lilac stared at V and held out their hand. “Come with me. You don’t have to stay here with these... These deserters!”

Wisteria pulled the trigger.

V watched the body fall with a fresh stick of jerky between his lips. The ensuing thud of 150kg of dead metal was met with similar dispassion. No cries of shock or sadness rang out. Seagrass stood stone still with her fingers curled tight against her abdomen. Pearl looked equally nauseated and irritated. Even Hibiscus merely looked at V with a watery, uncertain expression. Wisteria was the only one who moved, and it was to point the gun at V. Theta rushed out, but V held a staying hand out.

Wisteria didn’t so much as flick her eyes aside. “Who the hell is that.”

“A necessary evil,” he answered immediately. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t shoot her.”

“I ought to shoot _you_.” He was sure she meant every word.

“I would die just as easily.”

She sputtered a hard, cheerless little laugh. “Lilac was always a loyal type. Patriotic, I think humans called it. If you didn’t show up, he would’ve been calling for me to mobilize the whole fucking family to find you. I hope you have more sense. I hope you came here because you’re desperate because if it’s anything else, I think I'll just leave your body in the middle of the stacks so all of this can blow over that much faster.”

And what strangely comfortable territory that was. “We are both in luck in that regard. I wouldn’t come into your home like this unless my choices were limited. Pod?”

The silver support unit floated gingerly into the light of the fire, earning the immediate focus of every eye except Wisteria’s. “REPORT: UNIT FERN HAS TAKEN SEVERE DAMAGE AND IS IN NEED OF ADVANCED REPAIRS TO FLUID EXCHANGE PORTS, IN ADDITION TO A COMPLETE FLUID EXCHANGE.”

Wisteria glanced again at Theta and squinted at the dragging shape draped over Theta’s shoulder. When she looked back at V, the obvious question was in her eyes, and he answered her with a dark, warning stare and a shake of his head.

“Maman,” Hibiscus said gently, taking her hand without any sign of fear. “Let’s help them. That’s the human thing to do, right?"

She looked briefly exasperated with that straightforward, dangerously kind way of thinking, and V felt a stir of genuine sympathy for her. It was difficult to be pragmatic and have someone like Hibiscus ask for goodness instead.

At last, Wisteria put her gun away. “It's up to Pearl.”

“No.” V turned. Pearl was gripping himself so hard he looked ready to crush his own arms. Pinned by V’s gaze, he offered only a hoarse, aggrieved chant. “I can’t. I can't, I _can’t_.”

“Pearl.” A new voice. Scratchy and disused but intense, all smoke and static. One that sounded somewhat like V’s own.

Their eyes traveled to Seagrass before V’s did, but he knew right away that wasn’t her. Perhaps because he was (or had been) a twin himself, not even a truly identical body could have hidden the signs of a different person from him. She was stroking Fern’s hair with that a look too subdued and self-sure to belong to Seagrass.

“Please help them,” asked Seaglass. Her hands followed along, though she didn’t seem to notice. “Fern's just a kid, so please repair her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up: I was gonna do one more chapter before Christmas but Automata world guide Volume 2 released yesterday, I get it Monday, and I *NEED* to read through it.
> 
> If I chew through it in one night and have time to polish up the next chapter, cool. If I get absorbed, I will see y’all after the annual Holiday Hiatus, with the next release being on Jan 6.


	15. Out of [O]rder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 380-388: Something worth living for, something worth dying for, something worth killing for, something worth regret.

Nothing was left of Wisteria's shot but a self-preservation routine that had failed to execute. Just one more red error on top of a dozen others. It was that heavy thud of dead weight that only corpses made lingered in my head like a stuck pixel.

"I am even less interested in staying than you are in keeping me." V's voice. A conversation was going on around me, though I had no idea when or how it started. "What I do, I do to get to my destination with all possible haste."

"Including telling a densely populated sector that a human was present." Theta's judgment was pointless. Getting V to care about what he represented was like trying to catch the breeze. The tighter she squeezed, the more he would slip indifferently away. "You created a rift among androids that will be near impossible to patch."

"Hold it," said Pearl. "You're an orbital android; _you_ all are the ones who created the so-called rift in the first place and you haven't been doing a great job at patching it."

"A legitimate effort to boost android morale and intentionally creating chaos are not comparable actions."

"Boost morale…!"

I let the argument turn into angry noise amid insistent alerts that laughed in chirping, high-pitched beeps. Was this what I let myself be saved for?

Shards of glass glittered above my head in saturated blocks that I mistook for chromatic aberration. Chum's pale eyes stood out among them, blank as ever. No anger or pity—assuming it was capable of those emotions in the first place. Would have been a waste anyway. The world had a messy sense of humor and this was just the kind of senseless thing that happened on the ground.

Red oil seeped across the floor and despite Pearl's temper and Theta's self-righteousness poisoning the air, they couldn't permeate the held-breath silence that always inevitably turned up wherever I lingered. I thought for sure that if I stayed away from them. If I didn't get too close... But it wasn't enough that I received no orders. One way or the other, my presence led to the same result.

A hand stroked my hair, but I didn't understand why.

"I got it, Seaglass." The hand withdrew, replaced by a larger, rougher pair that cradled the back of my head and worked the panel at the back of my neck until it lifted with a click. "Don't work _that_ different, do you…"

Chum remained an expressionless watcher as my external interfaces dimmed and cut off.

* * *

**_"Love for another person is barbarism, for it is carried out at the expense of all others."_ **

Going in and out of different maintenance modes left my organizational subroutines unreliable at best. I had lot of blank spots. A lot of lost time. 'Now' lost meaning pretty quick when memory stopped processing chronological order. When things happened, they happened in splinters.

Theta answered Pod about Tau's viral capabilities. I choked on a laugh because the comms girl locked the door in a panic after she discovered I was outfitted, and I didn't think even she knew what she was so worried about. I squeezed the last drops from a small-nozzle bottle into a newly cleaned port. Seaglass cleaned oil from my skin with a surfactant that smelled strongly of damaged grass and made me crave all the sunshine I'd ever taken for granted. Pearl tossed aside gloves coated in staunching gel and oil, dropped into a chair, and let his head sag forward into his shuddering hands. V read aloud while Seagrass and Hibiscus watched in pure wonder. I gave the comms unit map data she could use to safely reach that sunny, flower-filled place she wanted to see.

Experiences came and went like that, bereft of context if I didn't take the time to enforce any.

V was there nearly every time I remembered to look for him. I wasn't sure why. He didn't have to keep Theta away from me. I was the last thing on her mind, and she didn't have anything more than the basic repair manuals that came with all android operating systems. Pod wouldn't have let her anywhere near me even she did. And Pearl wasn't going to accidentally break me during port repairs. Maybe he thought I was afraid?

I wasn't. I was bored.

Repair would have been slow anyway without specialty equipment, but it crawled because the one who was repairing me was Pearl. He was in the middle of removing a panel to better clean out a port I'd gunked up particularly bad when he swore and ran both his hands over his face. There seemed to be a lot more errors in my vision than I expected. Hadn't he fixed those already?

 _Obviously not._ Was there a term like déjà vu for the feeling that something was happening that _would_ happen but was happening too early? I tried to shift to help a wave of disorientation pass, but my higher motor functions were offline.

"Sorry," I mumbled, half at myself and half at him.

He shook his head, face still buried in one hand, and sighed. "Why?"

"Didn't plan this."

"No shit."

Nice to see his conversational skills were still stellar. "Not contagious, am I…?"

"No. Your friend with the silver hair says there's no contagion factor to worry about. Part of 'control measures'." He snorted. "If they were worried about that they shouldn't have made an android that uses viruses to begin with."

"…She's not my friend."

He ignored me and primed a dispenser. The astringent bite of de-coagulation agent disseminated into the room. It bubbled faintly as he applied it, and a mixture of oil and loosened gel trickled down my torso. Whatever pigment they used to make our internal lubrication red separated out, leaving a dirty pink-orange slime. Once it ran clear, he probed the port with a small bristly needle. Probably for chunks of stubborn gel that had become gummy and hard inside the nozzle due to overapplication.

His hands shook the whole time. By the end, tight lines had appeared beneath his eyes, like cracks spreading unchecked in aged cement.

"You ok...?"

"YoRHa came to this area once or twice before Normandy," he announced matter-of-factly. "We'd heard the rumors about your capabilities out in Brest—me, Seagrass, and Seaglass. Or the person he used to be. He's dead now. Destroyed like everything else out there."

"Great job n answering my question," I groused. "Since when are you so chatty…?"

"I am when I need to be."

"Didn't ask for your life story. Don't wanna hear it."

"And I don't want to _help_ you." He slammed my panel back in place hard enough that my vision blinked out for half a second. "But Seaglass asked me to. So you will listen. That is your payment."

I closed my eyes. I was hoping the stress would make my processing fail again and whisk me away to some other point in time, but it didn't. I stayed right where and when I was.

"…Fine."

"Brest was destroyed with the same overwhelming force that allowed machines to take Normandy in the first place. I lived. Seagrass lived. Seaglass was the unlucky one, and Seagrass wanted to save him. She thought you YoRHa couldn't really be that much different from us. That if it was possible for you all to save your memories and move your consciousness between bodies, it should be possible for us too. She wanted to preserve Seaglass in her own neural complex somehow. Let him live on in her body via partition. She was desperate, and I was rattled, and I let her talk me into doing it."

Pearl's voice stayed the same irritable growl as ever, but his body betrayed him. He crossed his arms tight over his chest. It didn't help him stop shaking. "I might as well have expected an android to run after stitching animal legs onto them."

I couldn't cover my face, so I settled for gnawing my lip. There were plenty of things that were against global regulations for android bodies. Certain modifications. The de-activation of certain sections of the brain. Use of internal reactors for anything external, which was frequently ignored.

What Pearl was talking about was the kind of rule that really shouldn't be ignored.

"…Is that why they don't talk?"

"Lots of pieces of the two of them are scrambled together," he answered with a dry, pained quirk of his mouth. "Who has control over what and who has what pieces of personality—all a mess. Seaglass doesn't talk because Seagrass doesn't talk. Memory is hard for her. She doesn't know why it bothers her when she talks, so she doesn't. She doesn't know Seaglass is in there, or that her vocal settings are actually his. I don't think she remembers who he was at all."

Few people in Sector H knew anybody from Brest. The same way nobody in Sector H knew any YoRHa from even though so many of us had joined that catastrophic descent mission to try reclaiming Normandy. Pearl had managed to stay known because quality repair personnel were never nobodies even when they gave up the job, but Seagrass was her own shadow and Seaglass a ghost trapped in her body.

Even by my metric, it was horrific as stories from the ground went, but I couldn't figure out what Pearl wanted out of this. I had assumed this was about blame. He wouldn't be the first. But the tone was all wrong. He was talking to me the way I'd talked to V when 'I' first met him. Part admission, part targetless and thus omnidirectional anger. It made my pulse race. Why not say it the way others had?

'Because of you.'

'If only you didn't exist.'

I already knew he hated me. It permeated him from the grinding teeth to the tightness of his fists. Unlike it had been for the comms unit, it wasn't a passing, momentary thing that happened because I was designed to be somebody's guilt-free sacrifice in the first place. There was nothing that opportunistic about it. Yet, it was grief that spilled over the edge of every grated word.

"If you're really thankful," he said with quiet finality that liquidized his coarseness. His thumb worried at his sleeve. He'd stopped shaking but his voice was barely there. "Tell me there's a way I can fix them."

A temperature warning popped up in my vision. My skin crawled and itched, and my chest squeezed, all of me attempting to retract away. But I remained immobile. My body and conscious chains that bound me to this moment. I would have given anything for this to be another untroubling blank spot, but I was there and then and my 'now' was to understand that Pearl still had _hope_. He didn't want to blame me any more than he wanted to blame Chum for the war or the destruction of Brest in the first place.

He wanted me to answer his prayer.

When I couldn't find anything in me but cold, alarmed silence, he gave a short, sour, uneasy laugh and abandoned me on the table.

* * *

**_"For me you're only a little boy just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you have no need of me either. For you, I'm only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we'll need each other."_ **

Seagrass still insisted on V reading to her. For reasons I couldn't explain, he obliged.

Maybe it was repayment. Getting enough fluid for the exchange that would need to punctuate my repair process place wasn't cheap or easy to get on a good day, but we'd kicked off what was bound to be a few months of very bad days.

He read more than one book. As many as she liked in whatever order she liked, even if she didn't finish one before she was requesting the next. Since my job was to lay there and be repaired in between Pearl taking frequent breaks to calm himself down and acquire materials and continue to insist that only he handle the food, I heard everything from poetry to prose to proverbs. All glaringly from Hibiscus' collection. I didn't get most of them, but it made a handy thread to follow when I wasn't sure what order I needed to put certain memories in.

_"Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell."_

_"The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love."_

_"What a peculiar planet! he thought. It's all dry and sharp and hard. And people here have no imagination. They repeat whatever you say to them."_

Hours at a time of stuff like that. Words that had been old before maso had ever been heard of. Occasionally I wondered if anyone but Pearl knew whose voice Seagrass was really listening for. On the bright side, Pearl's hands were steadier when she was there. Not that you'd know it for the way he screwed up his face.

Or maybe that was just because Theta was there this time.

"Unit 9S was here."

"Of course," said V.

"And you kept him away from me."

"He kept himself away from you." I couldn't see his smirk, but I could hear it just fine. "He slipped right past you on a few occasions."

"Your talent for operating so well together is taken into consideration. What about the other scanners?"

Silence. Everything V had ever said to Theta had been cast into doubt, but he'd interwoven so much of the truth into his act that it made half her questions redundant. Rather than repeat himself, he'd just stopped answering her whenever his replies wouldn't be different.

"I see," she said. "Then I am to understand it's a coincidence you're traveling with the only two combat-enabled YoRHa in existence?"

"In as much as it is a coincidence that 49 had access to otherwise unobtainable information and Fern has a sense for magic more potent than my own."

"What about the attack in the city ruins? If you were never an anti-legion weapon, what caused those bodies to re-activate?"

"Devils. And you would do well to treat them with the seriousness you did legion if you should see them again. They are capable of possessing objects much easier than living beings, and this world has no shortage of convenient husks."

Theta gave a controlled sigh that didn't quite conceal her frustration. "Devils were supposed to be a myth..."

"It _feel_ mythical when I shocked your system, doll face?"

Someone cleared their throat. Wasn't sure who, but they were terrible at pretending not to laugh. Theta ignored them and Griffon too. "Is there a risk we may encounter another situation like that?"

"It hasn't happened since I was rid of my white chlorination. But I wouldn't let your guard down. I came here with no warning and no clear catalyst, and a number of artifacts of my own world followed."

"The sword and what else?"

"That is none of your concern," V said, with the exact frostiness Theta always laced into saying 'That's classified'.

"It is absolutely my concern," she countered. "It sounds like there's a chance something unpleasant can pop out of the sky any minute if you're around."

"I _am_ 'something unpleasant that popped out of the sky'. Your world seems prone to intrusion, but that is a problem that does not involve me beyond finding my way out."

"I can accept that you had no part in your arrival here." Her voice lowered to a simmer. "What I cannot accept is how casually you've created chaos to facilitate your departure."

_There she goes again…_

She'd learn eventually. Probably not any time soon though, given what I'd heard about how things were up in the stacks.

Wisteria's infamy kept her from going anywhere near other androids, even the ones she theoretically trusted. Seagrass stayed with her or with V or sometimes sat with me and kept me company. So, Hibiscus turned out to be the one to take up the errand of gathering oil. I overheard Theta demanding updates from him and getting snapped at by Wisteria as a result. His reports on the outside world came as no surprise to me.

Among the first lessons I internalized on the ground: Clean cut 'us vs. them's did not exist in nature, nor could they be manufactured. Attempts by both machines and androids to contrive a black and white situation had resulted in a dozen gray bits. Machine pacifists and humanity fetishists and amusement park clowns and forest knights and resistance traders and even executioners—all interacting differently with one another despite there being, nominally, only two sides to the war.

The way Hibiscus told it, 'It's true' and 'It's a lie' were the primary groups. If more than three androids were in one place and someone said 'hey did you hear', that was the opening line of to a long, useless, and utterly inevitable argument where the involved parties attempted to convince themselves and whoever was within earshot of whichever view was more personally rewarding.

(Hibiscus had sighed with rare annoyance that did his best to avoid these arguments. He already knew which answer was correct, but some androids took his confidence as a challenge, or worse: an indication that he knew something they didn't.)

On the side of the skeptical was a growing group who held the more nuanced and volatile belief 'It's a lie that the Army is telling us.' To say V wasn't what he appeared to be was fair enough as denial reactions went, but to make it another Army lie was to throw water on an oil fire just to have the ensuing pillar of rage climb a little closer to the orbital satellites. A smaller sibling idea from the camp of truth maintained 'It's true and the Army has been hiding him' and stood arm in arm, happy to ignore the mutual exclusivity of their primary arguments in favor of uniting in shared resentment.

Most of the violence Hibiscus reported seemed to come from those two. Controlled, for now, in the same Army vs Resistance clashes we had been seeing since we arrived in the stacks anyway. It was the energized side of the other major axis that worried me: 'It doesn't matter' vs. 'It's everything that matters'.

Androids that had been on the ground discolored and bitten up by acid rain and waiting for their bodies to fail had suddenly resurrected with vigor that left Hibiscus audibly unnerved during his descriptions. They were obsessive. Of course they were—their one singular purpose for being had come back into the world and they would do anything for just a scrap of their supposed creator's attention, his notice, his _mercy_.

It was only right that they find him and put their all into his defense. Against anything. Demarcations like Resistance and Army did not matter to them. Until they found V, it was them against anyone who tried to stop them tearing the place up searching for him and if they found him, it was them against everybody who didn't present themselves as allies. Wisteria had already resolved one such case, and that was a microcosm of the way it was bound to go.

I had been them once. And I knew it was only a matter of time before those feelings became very, very ugly.

The old Fern had believed it was only natural that special entities like 'the last human' and 'the last YoRHa' should be in each other's company and even she was capable of bitterness in the face of V's ability to be both in denial and excruciatingly blatant about his favoritism. Now an army of desperate strangers would have to take their turns swallowing down the bile of being not just unwanted but unneeded. It would turn to acid. Some would let it chew through them and consign them back to the dirt. Others would spit it back out at the natural target.

For the old Fern, that had been the scanner. Soon, it would be me.

"VACCINE ADMINISTRATION COMPLETE," said Pod. "REPORT: VIRAL LOAD AT 0%. FLUID EXCHANGE SYSTEM CAN BE REACTIVATED UPON COMPLETION OF HARDWARE CLEANING."

"So now it's just the _extra_ boring parts," I said with a faint smile.

I wasn't afraid of confrontation any more than I was afraid of death. Knowing what other androids were thinking or feeling didn't change anything. We couldn't all be needed any more than we could all be wanted, and until V was gone or until he told me I was no longer necessary, I was the one who was going to be at his side.

* * *

**_"Forgive the soldier his death, the clown his goad, the tyrant his ire. In the cruel sea of their heart's desire, each drowned like any other man."_ **

I woke up alone with a YoRHa-issue visor in my grip and more clarity than I'd had in days.

The fluid exchange had been happening, little by little. My processing had recovered by about 70%, and my recent memory wasn't plagued by empty spaces and misattributions. I recognized the dingy barrels and mismatched chairs and the sturdy tables, one of which was now my uncomfortable repair bed. I recognized the tang of hot metal and cooked clay from the furnace and sticky, honey-sweetened beer in Chum's barrel and dust and rust and salt and wax.

Familiarity and all its comforts surrounded me like motes swirling in summer light, but all it did was remind me that this was a home I didn't belong in.

After however many hours in and out of consciousness with someone always nearby, the quiet unnerved me. A dozen increasingly absurd fears rose to mind, all complete with that same stupid, floaty sort of grief as before, and they compelled me to get up.

I must've looked a mess when I finally floundered onto my feet. I wasn't as alone as I thought. The room's only other occupant was Wisteria, and she looked at me with just the right kind of sympathy to piss me off.

"He's sleeping," she offered.

I hadn't gotten around to generating concerns that specific, but I relaxed anyway. "Where?"

"Follow the second wall to your left and take the first right turn."

I found V with his back pressed into some shadowy little corner in an empty room. A line split his brow nearly in two. He dreamed a lot since we left the city, and since we'd come to Normandy his sleep was rarely peaceful. I didn't wonder what he dreamed about. Didn't have to. In the aftermath of severe attacks, failed descents, or costly victories, survivors could often be found in the same position V slept in. Wrapped around their rifles the same way he wrapped himself around his cane.

I hadn't seen such a thin, leery sleep from him in a long time.

My hand was half-way out to him before the blindfold slipped from my fingers and dropped in his lap. An emotion I didn't recognize coiled around me like thin but binding wire, tightening in my throat until it threatened to slice through. V didn't need comfort from me. That wasn't my job.

Whether it was to preserve his dignity or defend myself from my own flagging emotional regulation, I snatched the visor and shambled back to the safer territory of Wisteria's pity.

My clothes were folded up by the furnace. Seaglass had taken them when she was prepping me for repair and cleaned them the same as she cleaned me. In the meantime, someone had put me in another of Hibiscus' terrible, too-big sweaters which left me with the least possible greater-than-zero value of dignity and Pearl with easy access to my ports a raised sleeve or undone button away.

Barefoot and bare-legged in thick, uncomfortably fluffy fabric with sleeves that kept sliding past my fingertips, I had to look like a lost child. I felt the part. Especially since I couldn't figure out why I was gripping that blindfold so tightly. Seaglass must've found it and someone must have given it to me, but for me to not remember when? It would have been days ago. Had I been holding onto it the whole time? All throughout my repair? It wasn't even _mine._ The old Fern had grabbed it off a body and for some reason, spared it from sinking into the oil field with our hair. Jammed it into a pocket and neither of us had thought about it again.

I had to laugh. Fern wasn't me, but even when I was her, I was the same person I'd ever been. Desperate to be someone else while I unconsciously clung to who I was. Even if that meant being reminded of what I was.

"Plenty of seats open if you need one."

I cracked a smile that was only a little disgusted and took the offer.

Wisteria looked strange without her stomach. Normal, but I'd gotten so used to her abnormality it came off gaunt and empty. Like she was some thin stranger only pretending to be Maman. She leaned on the handle of a broom, regarding a green fragment in the distinct color of a motherboard. Leftovers from the body, whose stain had already been scrubbed away.

"Kill _and_ cleanup," I muttered. "Rough assignment."

"I don't mind," she said, without offense. "Stuff like this upsets Pearl. He's worked really hard to push through it to repair you; least I can do is handle the messy stuff."

"I noticed. Funny all the animal parts don't set him off."

"What are animal guts supposed to resemble to an android," she asked with a bright laugh. "Oil has more meaning than blood, doesn't it?"

What a dangerously realistic and highly uncomfortable thing to say so light-heartedly with a human in the other room.

For a number of reasons, I'd never wanted to be close to any of the fetishists. But the same way Wisteria seemed to sand down the more obnoxious edges of V's personality, she had a magnetism that always made me especially averse to her. Talking to her gave me the impression I was talking to an older executioner. Something I constantly failed to reconcile with this cozy little home she'd burrowed into. How could she be laughing like that when we talking about her cleaning up the body of a family member whose life she had ended?

The question fluttered out like a tired moth. "Just how many androids have you killed, Wisteria?"

Wisteria eyed me until she was satisfied I was asking in good faith. The question had no fangs, no teeth at all even though mine were biting into my lip, but I was a liar by trade and by design. There was no way for her to know I was as terrified of her as I was drawn to whatever secret gave her that power over me.

She eased into the nearest seat more heavily than she needed to. However long she'd been 'pregnant' for, the routines were well ingrained. "You're an E-type, I hear. Specialized for killing androids."

"For killing other YoRha, technically." I shrugged. "But some of us were on surface duty. Making sure nobody asked too many questions or got too loud about their doubts over the moon story."

"How many did _you_ kill?"

"…Twenty-two."

"Did you think you were right?"

"I thought I had my orders."

"So no. But it was your job, and your job was the point of your existence, so you performed it admirably. If I was your commander, I would've been sure to commend you." She wrinkled her nose in playful disgust and smiled. "And you would've hated it."

"I really would have." She laughed again, so gently and genuinely it made me boil. "You didn't answer my question."

She folded her hands over her stomach, but they slid uselessly into her lap. "I've killed dozens of androids, some of them much closer to me than Lilac was. A few of them with a lot less warning. And I probably killed hundreds vicariously when I was an active command unit. Same as Theta, and same as…what was your commander's name?"

I almost said I didn't know. On the Bunker, she had never been anything but 'Commander'. But she had been someone somewhere before YoRHa. That person had a name and at least one person (albeit a crazy one) who remembered her fondly.

"White."

"Did White ever once tell you that the burden of your orders was on her, not you?"

My mouth dropped open. I had to struggle to keep a straight train of thought through the imagery of the Commander I knew comforting me. Comforting _anybody._ "My memory of the Bunker is all shredded up, but I don't remember her saying anything like that to me. I was specifically designed to execute androids and emotions were prohibited. Why would she say anything like that?"

"Because an often-forgotten part of command is bearing guilt and no matter what they prohibited up there in orbit, you aren't half as unaffected as you like to look."

"...Are you?"

She raised a brow at me and gave a soft 2-note whistle. Chum stretched down one of his spindly arms and handed her a beer. "The success of a command unit comes from their tactics, but their longevity is based on how well they can handle guilt. Do you think I'm handling it well?"

A flicker of green still rolled between her fingers. "Yeah, actually."

"Flattering. But if I was really that good, I wouldn't be down here." She closed her eyes, gone for a moment into memories that might as well have been infinite compared to my meager four years' worth. "I'll spare you the gory details, but let's say my natural lifespan as a command unit ended a long time ago. I hit my capacity for guilt, so I decided I'd take responsibility instead."

Every part of me tensed as I struggled to digest that. I could feel an important distinction being made but I didn't know how to translate it into something I could use. I didn't know if there was a way for me to. She was a command unit. She might not even think like I did on a base level.

My eyes fell to motion at my lap. I grimaced at the way my hands were wringing at the visor. "Is that something that's possible for me?"

"No reason it shouldn't be. But you won't get what you're looking for if you just do what I do."

There was a time I'd have been upset hearing her talk like she knew me. At that moment, I was a lot more worried that whatever I'd come so close to was about to slip away. "Why not?"

She tipped the bottle against her lips, watching me over the dark glass in a way that made me feel transparent. When she set it aside, she didn't look away from me. "Because there's a difference between deciding to live for something and deciding to die for it and you don't know which one you're aiming for."

The skin under my teeth split. It stung, but no oil welled in the wound.

"Sorry," I blurted, climbing back to my feet and waddling toward the table with all the pumps and canisters under it. "I don't know why I asked you any of this. Forget it."

"Fern."

My legs stuttered. It felt like it had been a while since anybody but V had called me that. "What?"

"Androids were designed to endure. When we lose things, we latch onto other things or ideas that we think will help us continue in this world, and we can't let that go, regardless of the right or wrong of it. I've seen it so many times I have lost count. No one ever stops. Not for anything. So when you do decide, choose carefully."

I stared ahead, unsure of what to say or do.

Wherever 49 was now, the unignorable presence of V had allowed him to endure after having everything he possibly could have latched onto taken away. Circumstances that came later and didn't involve V at all had allowed him to choose a new course for himself.

But was it new? Wanting to be with 2B was all he wanted before she died. Wanting to be with 2B was all he wanted now, and nobody could have convinced me he wouldn't bring the whole fucking moon crashing down if that's what it took. The moment he believed he could get back what he'd always wanted in the first place, everything else had sloughed off. Even V couldn't slow him down. Wisteria was the same. She'd created a home and filled it with family and did whatever was she felt was necessary to ensure they got to exist just as they were. There was nobody she _wouldn't_ kill to that end—V included.

Then there was me.

Hibiscus saved me from falling into the chasm that awaited me beyond that door. He slammed into the room at speed and nearly tripped over Wisteria's broom, staring at both of us with wide, jittering eyes as he gaped and failed to articulate himself.

My laugh was tiny. Mostly nerves. No good news came like that.

Theta appeared behind him with Pod looming close over her shoulder. Her eyes caught coal-bright in the fire's light even as deep shadows settled under her tight-drawn brows.

"The Army of Humanity is deploying personnel from orbit."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year~ Today's quotes are brought to you by:  
> Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry  
> Nietzsche on Love (Warbler Press Contemplations)  
> The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky  
> Joan Crawford  
> Free Will by Edward Locke


	16. [P]arallel Computing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 380.2 - Different priorities, identical goals, and that thing they say about the best-laid plans.

The measurements of a scanner uniform were tailored to the standard dimensions of a YoRHa male-type model. They were produced in bulk, the same way clothing on the ground was. Less flashy than the clothing of female models, but with all same care put into utilities like thermal regulation. Granted most of the more elaborate aspects were supposed to assist cooling rather than heating. Androids could overheat to compensate for the cold up to a point, but the most they could do about high temperatures once they crossed into problem territory was vent the excess heat and hope it was enough to stay functional. Overall, YoRHa uniforms were exceptionally durable, uniquely functional, and easily exchangeable between units. Natural differences between unit bodies rarely occurred at a level that required special tailoring. Without post-rollout physical modifications, one size fit all.

9S tugged at his new coat anyway. Shifted and settled and shifted again inside the confines of a perfect fit that no longer felt perfect. His partly charred resistance clothes piled where he'd shed them, and he'd lost track of how long he'd been standing there staring at them.

After a long stretch of being nobody, he was YoRHa again. Logically he had never ceased to be a YoRHa model, so it escaped him why that should bother him. That it escaped him only made him fidget more and with less patience so that he had to force his hands into his pockets to keep from ripping the material.

When 801S called him by his designation it was odd, but it still fit in all the ways the uniform didn't. It still belonged. Like having white hair again. He'd never stopped being what he was, but his nerves hummed with rejection. The attire that had once defined part of his identity now only served to confine him. Maybe it always had.

9S' body hadn't changed an inch, but he had outgrown those clothes.

Shadow nudged him. Her attentive gaze seemed to say she understood his restlessness and whether that was true or just wishful projection, it soothed 9S a little. He scratched between her ears until her purr was a reassuring rumble against his hip. "I'm okay."

801S marched by him with an armful of parts and two delicate screwdrivers hanging out of the corner of his mouth. "I'll be ready to go after this."

A wilting noise of acknowledgment was as much as 9S could manage.

After an unsettling trip through the factory to find the post-assembly area, they were able to make use of the automated in-house systems to run a full diagnostic. Since then he'd been spot repairing his body. Trudging around and snatching whatever components he needed. By now he was probably in better condition than 9S was. Still he kept at it, with vivid but tempered ferocity in his eyes.

801S always had a bit of a temper. Not the abrasive and needlessly harsh attitude 11S always had; more like the unexpected flashes 4S was capable of when his few buttons were pushed. In 801S, it had mostly slipped out when people were flippant about their repairs. Apparently, a lot of H units on extended Bunker duty got like that. Explosive or cold depending on what suited their personality. In these new circumstances, 801S was neither. Clarity gave his gaze the dangerous gleam of broken glass, carefully self-contained in the same way a nuclear reactor was technically contained. Being around him was like orbiting a cold-burning sun and wondering if it would feel like fire or ice when it flared.

If he was serious about destroying the moon server, 9S guessed he'd find out soon enough.

"Did you mess your hands up getting in here too?"

"Huh?" 801S flexed his skinless, freshly re-plated fingers and gestured to the pile of digit segments he'd dropped off atop one of the few conveyor belts graced by spotlights. "Oh. Not really. Just some stress, nothing major."

"I'll take a look at them anyway."

"You really don't need to, I'm fine."

"That's what you always say," 801S said testily. "You haven't been to a YoRHa-specialized repair facility since you last saw me on the Bunker, and your body's been under a lot of stress. You did alright, but you're not an H-type."

"Neither are you!" The look 801S gave him forced 9S' foot plunging down into his throat. It wasn't like he was incorrect; his final designation was 801 **S _._** He was a scanner, even if hybridization and the nature of his job did make him more healer than scanner in practice—though 9S had more sense than to say so out loud. "...Sorry."

801S glared at him for a moment longer and let it go with a scoff. "I can't believe I used to worry about you."

"…You did?"

"We all did. I just had a special perspective since you ended up on my table so much. Which is how I know you're lax about your repairs, so show me your damned hands."

"Fine, fine." He tugged his gloves off and wiggled his fingers. "See? It's really nothing that bad."

801S snatched 9S' mangled index finger with the quick, deft accuracy of a bird pecking a mosquito out of the air. "You were saying?"

9S blinked, his lips parting without a sound. It wasn't that he'd forgotten having that finger shot off, but the physical damage he'd taken was the least of what had happened to him that day. Rejection and rage took up so much more space, the sting lingering even now. Even though he knew better.

In hindsight, it was obvious why V kept brushing him off. The transformation that later let him stand his ground against 8E was the same one that killed Aconite, and it must have been right under his skin. Ready to escape if he didn't make himself impenetrable. But all 9S had been able to process at the time was how unbearable it was to once again encounter that too familiar pattern of being kept close one moment and pushed away the next. Some part of him had hoped that V would be _better_ than that. And in his wildest dreams, that he might offer the one thing 2B never could: Escape.

9S couldn't have left 4S and 11S, and he would never have gone anywhere without 2B's data, but that wasn't the point. The point was the impulse. To run away. Go where there was no N2 or Theta. It wouldn't have mattered where. Any place where it didn't feel like the world was about to collapse out from under his feet for a second time He wanted what he'd had during those slow fall months before the fire. Just the two of them doing pointless things in pointless peace in the close but not too close nature of their shared company. But V couldn't be what 2B was any more than 9S could be Nero. Now merely a factual thought, but at the time a flare of agony far greater than the loss of a finger.

Come to think of it, V had stopped calling him a child after that...

"You just jammed it back on and left it like this for months," 801S grumbled, snapping him back to the present. "And I'm supposed to believe what you say about your own repair state?"

"It wasn't bothering me."

"Poor calibration didn't bother you either until it got corrected and you realized you were operating like shit."

9S accepted the call out with a cough and averted his eyes. "I get it. Really, I do." He curled his fingers in, uncertainly at first, and then tightly enough that 801S would have had to pry to get to his target. "Leave it. I don't want that fixed."

801S stared between the shoddily reattached digit and 9S a couple of times. Obediently, he let go and shifted his focus to fix the equally minor but less physically apparent damage in 9S' hands. Just like on the Bunker, his star-coated visor tied back all the hair he'd refused to cut. His expression was as visible as it was completely unreadable.

Partly because the silence was awkward and partly because the question had been on the tip of his tongue for days, 9S asked, "You really think we should destroy the server?"

"Yes." So matter-of-fact. He either knew and accepted it sounded crazy or he didn't think it was crazy in the slightest.

"That's extreme, isn't it?"

"You forgot who I was five times been my rollout and the Bunker falling."

9S flinched. "…I'm sorry."

"Don't. It's not your fault, so don't you dare apologize. That was the nature of the job. Get killed, lose pieces of yourself you can't get back, go get killed again. _For the glory of mankind_." He sat his tools aside. They had bent in the shape of his grip. "From the start the only ones who cared about us were us. I don't see any reason I should care about anything _but_ us now."

That was hard to argue with. "I guess you have a plan then?"

801S nodded toward the door. "We can use these spare bodies to trigger a black box reaction."

9S frowned. It was simple. Straightforward. Fairly obvious. The kind of plan he would have come up with if he had come to the moon with similar intentions. Physical destruction would be quick, easy, and keep him fully out of harm's way. Meaning there'd be no danger to 801S, 4S, 11S, or 8E—and by extension, no risk of stripping V of another companion at an inopportune moment, especially when he'd given his most versatile one away.

"Destroying the moon server is what N2 was going to do. If _we_ do it…" He couldn't make himself say it. He didn't even know if he could describe the kinds of things he felt in the corruption-blackened fragments of memory that 801S wouldn't have been able to access. The hammering pain that bled through his deteriorating sense of self. Being crushed in slow motion by unfulfillable desires until the only means to save himself was to do exactly what N2 had been planning anyway. "I'd like to see if it's possible to just disable the pod protocol and leave everything else intact."

"The defense system is bound to be the most aggressive you've probably ever encountered."

"I know."

"It won't make you a good person to put yourself at risk unnecessarily."

**"I know."**

801S went quiet. 9S tugged at his coat and clamped down on his unnecessary annoyance. Of course the other scanner could predict with piercing accuracy what was on 9S' mind; he'd been through 9S' memories recently and comprehensively. "The lunar server isn't just the pod protocol," he started over. "It's all sorts of information. About humans, and androids, and aliens, and Emil—probably even us. I don't want to tear it down as a first resort."

"I see."

"We also… don't know how many black boxes are left in here. The ones we use could be someone's only chance."

"Nobody gets a chance if anything happens to you," 801S said gently, but with obvious intent to impress on 9S where his priorities lay. "We'll try it your way. But if we can't or it looks too dangerous, we do it my way. Fair?"

9S nodded. "Fair."

* * *

The moon server was closer to the northern pole, in an area 801S identified as the Sea of Serenity. Why humans would name a bunch of dirt a sea, or think it was in any way serene when it was a crater-pocked mess was beyond 9S. Thinking about it gave his mind something to do, though. The alternative was to think about the skinless, half-activated android clopping along just behind them. They'd loaded it up with no base data so most of its higher functionality was offline, but it was operational and showed no sign of viral infection.

He had to struggle not to skewer it on principal.

Once or twice when desperate times called for extremely desperate reinforcements, he'd force booted already-dead androids to assist him. It was easy. All it called for was a corpse with an undamaged power supply and for however long it took their reactors to destabilize in the absence of a fully functional operating system, they could function well enough to do some damage or at least act as a distraction. But they were terrible to watch. He'd never seen anything move the way those androids did. Too fast with too much force, unregulated, and with no regard for their own base structure. The one thing the reboots did usually have was a little bit of remnant personality. The capability to express themselves, albeit in a limited capacity. The newly booted android following them had no personality at all. Sharp white lights shone from its eyeless sockets and 9S couldn't stop thinking about the blank gazes of passive machines.

801S didn't appear bothered by it at all. He had an extra black box cradled securely in both hands, and his eyes faced forward. Trained on his goal and nothing else as they walked in Pod's light ahead of the lunar dawn.

The lunar server facility resembled a white coin from atop the hill where it first became visible. Smooth and circular save a single bump of an antechamber poking out from what would ostensibly be the front. A sea of black spires surrounded the back, reflecting the stars. Some kind of solar energy storage structures, most likely.

9S held out an arm to hold 801S back. "Hey, Pod, are there any exterior defensive systems we should know about?"

"REPORT: ANTI METEORIC IMPACT SYSTEMS UNLIKELY TO TARGET ANY SURFACE-BASED APPROACH. HOWEVER, A LARGE UNKOWN ELECTRONIC SIGNAL HAS BEEN DETECTED."

"So?" asked 801S. "It's probably the single largest server android kind has; a large signal should be normal right?"

"Not an unknown one." 9S glanced first at 801S, whose frown showed the first signs of healthy hesitation, and then at Pod 153. "Last time you gave me a vague warning like that, I ended up at the bottom of a hole talking to Beepy. Can you be more specific?"

Her antennae spun in the increasingly tight-wound silence. "REPORT: MATCH FOUND FOR YORHA SUPPORT UNIT, HOWEVER, THE SIGNATURE SUGGESTS AN UNUSUALLY HIGH NUMBER OF POD SUB-UNITS."

"How many is 'unusually high'?"

"UNKNOWN."

"Well, approximate!"

"APPROXIMATION: HUNDREDS."

801S and 9S shared a stunned look. If Pods were the administrators of the YoRHa plan, it was reasonable to believe they were authorized to execute it. That many pods could scour them clean off the surface of the moon.

"…Plan B?" 801S asked apprehensively.

"Plan B."

801S grabbed the spare body by the shoulders and made a point of marching it ahead of both of them.

An android in that state couldn't handle complex orders. Its present operation hinged on a single base order: 'Follow us'. And while the ultimate plan in 9S' mind was a simple 'cause a black box reaction', there were a lot of implicit details that wouldn't necessarily process in an android that wasn't cognizant enough to have any common sense. Like the timing necessary to not catch 801S and 9S in the explosion. They'd decided before they even left the factory to avoid relying on orders or base imperatives. Instead, 801S manually entered a motor pattern based on the NFCS weapon routines. It would trigger once the android's surface temperature reached a certain threshold, resulting in a flashy but brief sequence that would end in the desired black box reaction.

It was as silent close to the facility as it was everywhere else on the moon. The white walls loomed larger than he'd expected. Three, maybe even four stories high. Too tall for him to scale and smooth besides. There were no windows. No exterior sensors that Pod could detect.

What there were, as they moved toward the far side of the building where shade would give them extra time, were footprints in the dust.

"Hey," he called in a low, shaky voice. "Have you been here before?"

"Huh? You followed my trail, what the hell are you—"

801S stopped dead beside him.

The tracks were deep. Maybe some kind of compensation for the low gravity. Modestly heeled the way 9S was used to Operators' shoes being. Some steps were old. Some were new. The pattern was the same regardless. They exploded in wide, skidding, messy steps out into the dust, slowed to a stop, and turned back around. Back to the smooth stone where there should have been a door or a supply delivery point.

Looking out over the moon from where one or two steps meandered further beyond the rest, there was nothing to see.

Except Earth.

"Someone is in there," 9S whispered.

"Someone who was trying to get out," 801S agreed, walking toward the sealed entry. "And if there's a pod, good chance it's a YoRHa unit. What are the odds they're alive?"

"High, probably. The infection didn't even spread to everyone even on Earth, and this is way more remote than Earth." Shadow padded up and sat beside 801S at the door, her ears pricked forward as though she too was interested in who was inside. "Back to plan A?"

"Preferable." 801S crossed his arms, his lips pressing thin. "But probably not realistic."

9S joined them at the door. Like the door to the YoRHa facility, entry was a matter of mechanical interaction. This one requiring a part too specialized for android hands to replicate or brute force. A pentagonal hole with a small, concentric pentagonal rod in the center. Kind of a weird shape for a key in 9S' opinion, but it was certainly doing its job locking them out.

Shadow's ears drooped when 9S shot an inquisitive look. The walls around this place had a forbidding sense of weight and density. They weren't purely concrete and had to have been over a meter thick. Way too much for her to cut through. Never mind the kind of internal reinforcements they must've had to withstand this environment.

Beside them, 801S' glared ahead with all the focused intensity of a blowtorch, but the stone remained cold and impervious. No secret buttons. No hidden panels. Soon enough, his shoulders fell. "We can't stay here all day."

9S stayed quiet, though he noted Shadow's tail stiffen in his periphery.

"Even if we got in, that wouldn't solve the problem with the pods," 801S reasoned, more with himself than 9S. A frustrated sigh hissed out of him and he whirled. "Come on. Let's get this done before the sun rises."

Shadow's posture straightened. Her ears twitched and twisted. Before 9S could ask what had her attention, electromagnetic activity prickled on his skin. She whirled, her head scattering into a cloud of clawed hands that snatched him off his feet and dragged him out of the way.

Pressurized air and dust erupted from the entrance in a deafening gust, blowing the stray android aside and nearly knocking 801S off his feet. The newly opened door spit out a female model YoRHa, who rammed into him and toppled them both into the dirt.

9S struggled free of Shadow's grasp and dashed to the other scanner's side, his sword at the ready. The female model recoiled back from him, her eyes wide and terrified, alternating between the end of his sword and the moon around them. Her hands were burned, and she was ragged in a dozen tiny ways, damaged in a few not so tiny ones, and leaking blood from a wound in her side.

"Where's...the ocean?" she asked in a voice that wavered on the razor-thin boundary between confusion and hysterical panic.

A dozen pods swarmed out, bright red and guns at the ready as they separated cleanly into three groups to surround each of them.

The new girl stood slowly. She looked hesitantly at 9S and 801S then up out at the curve of the Earth on the horizon. Her shoulders fell, and she gave a pitiful laugh, raising her hands in surrender. The rank of pods broke to let her go back and she shuffled slowly back the way she had come.

801S' eyes darted to 9S, and flicked toward the spare android, standing idle not too far away. 9S slid his feet a little further apart and gave the slightest nod.

Dust kicked high behind him. Bullets bit into his tracks, chased at his heel, broke like torrential rain against the shield program that raised around him as he reached 801S. They retreated backward together, and the spare android marched clumsily to catch up. The female model yelped and most of the pods whirled in perfect unison and unloaded.

A mass of black spines exploded from beneath them. Most of the red pods were skewered before they could begin to adjust targets. They fell toward the moon's surface in slow motion, sparking and twitching dying insects. Iron Will arced through the rest in a cloud of sparks, silent in the absence of atmosphere save a few muffled crunches of impact.

The moon was quiet again.

801S scrambled to his feet, he grabbed the new girl's hand and ran. Away from the rising sun, cresting the nearest hill and sliding down just enough to be out of the oncoming light.

9S slid down next to them and peeked back over the crest. There was no new activity, not yet. "You think we can still pull off a black box reaction like this?"

"Somehow I don't think we're gonna get the time to figure out a new way to set that up with enough time to get out of range."

801S stared out on the rest of the moon, his mind visibly spinning in search of a solution to their new predicament. If they ran any further, they would be vulnerable. Trapped in the thin strip of the inhabitable zone if the red pods followed. If it didn't and they managed to escape, they'd lost the initiative. There was only one time of day they could approach this place without freezing or cooking in their own bodies.

Whatever they were going to do, they needed to do it now.

"Hey, you," 9S said, creeping closer to the female model. "Is there anything we can do about that Pod?"

"What are you talking about...?" She gave him a watery look and stood, impotent fists forming beside her skirt. "I'm not fighting. I'm going back."

"That's suicide," 801S snapped. "Look at you, you look like you crawled out of a compactor. You're still _bleeding_."

She clapped a hand over her waist and squeezed. "It's only because I ran. As long as I go back, Pod 006 will just take my memory, and everything will be like before." Her face scrunched up like she was thinking hard about something that refused to come to her. "...I think. I know this isn't the first time this has happened. I assume this is how it went last time."

9S swallowed and forced his voice to remain steady. "You just accept that?"

"As opposed to _what_?! I don't know what you're doing here but look around. This is the moon and there isn't a human in sight. They told me I was in the ocean at a relay station for the Council of Humanity! But this is the moon! This _is_ the Council of Humanity! Humans have been dead the whole time!" She rubbed at her face, pressing it into her hands. "I'd rather… just forget it all..."

9S looked to 801S for help, but the other scanner didn't bat a lash. He politely waited for her to be done like her reaction was bad weather that had to pass, before asking calmly, "Does that mean Pod 006 will actually talk to you?"

"What…? I guess…"

"Tell it the Bunker had been destroyed."

**" _WHAT?!"_**

"801S, you're scaring her. Listen—" The pods didn't seem to be coming, so he stood to talk to her eye to eye. "I'm 9S. What's your name?"

"No. 10… Type H."

"10H, we don't have a lot of time. Just tell Pod 006 the Machine War is over and we're here with a really important update."

10H eyes went glassy, but she nodded. She hobbled back to the door on sluggish limbs and disappeared inside. The minutes ticked by while the temperature increased. 9S shifted his weight, straining to see even a hint of movement.

Eventually, one lone 006 unit drifted up to them. "THIS IS YORHA SUPPORT UNIT POD 006, REQUESTING DATA EXCHANGE WITH YORHA SUPPORT UNIT POD 153."

"THIS IS POD 153 TO POD 006," Pod 153 answered. "DATA EXCHANGE REQUEST ACCEPTED ON CONDITIONAL BASIS."

"QUERY: WHAT IS THE CONDITION FOR EXCHANGE REQUEST TO PROCEED?"

"IN APPROXIMATELY 2 MINUTES AND 38 SECONDS, LUNAR SURFACE TEMPERATURES WILL INCREASE BEYOND ACCEPTABLE YORHA UNIT SURVIVABILITY CURVE. PROPOSAL: UNITS SHOULD ENTER THE SERVER FACILITY FOR THE DURATION OF THE EXCHANGE."

"REPORT: IT IS UNCLEAR IF IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO ALLOW ANY ACTIVE YORHA UNITS EXCEPT FOR UNIT 10H INSIDE THIS FACILITY. PROPOSAL: DATA EXCHANGE WILL FACILITATE THIS DECISION."

"NEGATIVE. THIS POD'S ASSIGNMENT IS TO SUPPORT YORHA UNIT 9S. THIS POD CANNOT ACCEPT ANY PROPOSAL THAT WOULD ENDANGER THE ASSIGNED UNIT."

"Pod 006," 801S intruded carefully. "Your assignment parameters are based on preventing the exposure of the nature of this facility, right? It's public knowledge on Earth now. So is the YoRHa project. Your mission is complete."

"REBUTTAL: YOU DO NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO MAKE THAT CALL. HOWEVER, WE WILL KEEP THAT UNDER CONSIDERATION."

"Can we consider it _inside_?"

The red pod's digits clicked rapidly, in agitation or confusion. It sank a little. Sullenly, 9S thought. "...PERMISSION GRANTED ON CONDITIONAL BASIS: YORHA UNITS ARE TO REMAIN IN THE EXTERIOR HATCH ROOM."

"We can do that!"

"CONDITIONS ACCEPTED. UPDATED PROPOSAL: COME ALONG AND GET INSIDE BEFORE YOU CATCH YOUR DEATH OUT HERE."

Weird phrasing, but 9S wasn't about to point it out and 801S didn't either.

Outside the door, they found the spare android still online. The plates and soft, shock-absorbing fibers had all been destroyed by concentrated fire. Bits of mangled metal and shrapnel poked through at odd angles. It was motionless, save the blink of its optic lights. 9S trotted by it with a grimace, but 801S paused. He knelt, whispered something, and shut it down before grabbing its black box and jogging inside.

Behind them, the door closed as the sun shed unbuffered light on the moon's surface, scorching the unprotected remains of android and pod alike.


	17. The Rebellion of the Dolls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 390: Escaping Normandy

I bounced on light steps, stretching and flexing my body. Engaged my NFCS. Swapped between weapons and chipsets. Did a routine with a scuffed up old YoRHa blade knocking around my storage area just to make sure I was moving the way I remembered. Pearl and Pod had done an alright job manually calibrating my signal relays but my first fluid exchange in well over a year was definitely the star of my functionality. Internal resistance was down. My movements were fluid, fast, and precise, and most importantly they felt _good._ I was going to need that.

"It's officially a descent mission then?"

"First since the war ended."

"Against our own kind… What are they thinking?!"

Descent Mission #244. Stated goal: Enforce order in Sector H. Actual mission parameters per Theta's clearance: Suppression of Resistance forces to whatever degree was deemed necessary to secure surrender and cessation of hostilities, the arrest and corrections of any local army personnel who had abandoned their posts or were otherwise behaving erratically, and finally, locating and securing V.

In other words, the 244th descent was a quelling and capture operation.

I swapped to my 4O bracers. Limited range, poor defensive utility, really only useful for YoRHa who favored the high mobility approach or knew how to make a precise strike. Couldn't remember worth a damn where or when I first acquired them, but they were more familiar to me than any sword. I completed the standard executable routine without touching a single thing in the cluttered room.

Hibiscus clapped, his goggles brightened by the sparks as I de-materialized. His attitude toward us hadn't changed much. V didn't seem to care, but I wished he would show a little more restraint around me. At least enough not to applaud like I was putting on a goddamn show.

"Cut that out," I hissed.

"Sorry, sorry," he said with a grin that wasn't sorry in the least. "Theta and Pod went ahead with Maman. They're waiting for you guys."

"Good." I called out over my shoulder. "Hey, Shakespeare, storytime is over!"

V shot me a reproachful look and clapped shut a particularly worn book, handing it off to Seagrass. "To think I'd almost gotten used to you being quiet."

"Aww, I'll be sure to not let you get so lonely in the future."

He gave an unamused tug of his mouth in reply. Damn it felt good to be operational again.

"One more thing before we head out!" Hibiscus' fingers drummed eagerly on a side of a box he'd been carrying in before I distracted him. "Since we get to properly part ways this time, I gathered up some parting gifts for you guys!"

"Is it stuff we don't need that will pointlessly weigh us down?"

"No." He paused. One brow raised. Then both brows scrunched, and he rubbed at his chin. "I mean there's one or two things you probably don't _need_ but they're light and won't get in the way. The rest is stuff that's useful, I promise. Like, uh… this! This is for you."

He handed me a pouch of fluid in the ugliest shade of pink I'd ever seen in my life. "...Huh."

"What? You have to treat your filtration system if you're going to the night kingdom, you know."

"No, I know that, I've just—I'm realizing I've never had to use this before. Never stationed anywhere cold enough to warrant it. …Sorry for doubting you, I guess."

"No problem!" Overflowing with his usual blithe confidence, he dug in the box again. "You also got this cool rod from Pearl along with the rest of his jerky and some honey and I packed you one of my favorite sweaters… Oh, and something special from Seaglass and Seagrass!"

Scrounging in his pockets and dug out a tangle of chains off which hung maybe a dozen tags. Their rattle was almost sing-song, too clear and chime-like to be the product of cheap tin or scrap aluminum. Seagrass wrenched them indignantly from his hands and got them separated back out with equal parts care and efficiency and handed the first set to me. Instead of writing my name or guessing at any of my information, a curled plant had been etched carefully onto all four tags.

A fern.

In my periphery, Seagrass had moved on to V and was making a lot of hand movements. "We didn't want to bring it up in front of Theta," Hibiscus translated in a conspiratorial whisper. "But she made a set for 49 too. Can you get it to him?"

The jangle of eight tags settling against a bony chest was V's response. It snapped me out of it a little, enough to slip the chain of my own tags around my neck and pluck my shirt to let them slip beneath.

"You guys okay?" Hibiscus asked warily. "You're awfully quiet…"

Four tags engraved with ferns. Polished smooth and still warm against my skin. "I'm fine."

"As am I." V held out the blue-bound book he'd carried all during the summer. "I leave this to you. I'm sure it will suit your tastes if the pitfalls of human love interest you."

"Really?! Wait, no, no, you don't have to give us anything. You're the guest, you're _supposed_ to get taken care of."

"And you have done so. Consider it a parting gift to a worthy host."

Hibiscus frowned and let the book rest in his hands with a sort of reverent confusion. It was the most careful I'd ever seen him be about something he obviously wanted, but that only lasted for the few seconds it took to close his hands around it and accept. A smile bloomed that brightened his filthy face until I thought he would either short out or start glowing. To him, V being his guest was way more important than him being human, but that didn't change the fact that a human had just praised his hospitality and given him a gift. That dingy little book had probably just become the most important item in his whole world.

I waited until after he darted off behind Chum to store it in his treasure box to peek at V. "I thought you liked Heine."

"I do," he said. "When he finds it in himself to touch subjects other than his ill-fated romances."

"Like how much he loves his mother?"

The look he gave me could have scoured the paint off a truck. I bit my cheek to keep from grinning and let it go at that. Not like I was really all that upset about him giving it away. He'd read it front to back multiple times and it wouldn't have surprised or bothered me if he left it behind simply because he was bored of it. But I knew better. V could be surprisingly principled when it came to the settling of his debts. He wouldn't have given it away if he thought it was just junk or lacked meaning. For him to give the book to Hibiscus as a gift meant he valued it.

Plus, it was one less thing to carry.

Hibiscus took unfamiliar turns and led us down through tunnels we'd never been in before. Android density in the stacks and on the shore had reached record highs, to the point the Sector H train was no longer running to the mainland at all. A decision I'm sure was very popular with the Resistance. His chattiness was absent. So was the wasteful energy usually conveyed by his movements. He walked with purpose, and the only distraction he allowed himself was to carefully remove the occasional dim bulb as we passed it.

A murmur reached us just before we rounded a corner to a dead end. Wisteria sat on a ladder rung, bathed in a pale red-violet haze of twilight that filtered down from above. Like Hibiscus, she'd taken to wearing goggles that shone a dull, green light.

I didn't miss the explosives sitting between her feet.

Whatever conversation she and Theta had been having reached a mutual conclusion without them so much as them exchanging a last look. It was hard to say if it was an oversight that I hadn't figured out Wisteria was a command-type, or if it had just become that much more obvious now that I got to watch two of them interact. Theta regarded me once, fully up and fully down from beneath the drawn hood of a leather cloak someone had given her. She hadn't bothered me at all during my repair process, and we hadn't seen each other in equally operational states since the launch facility. If she had anything to say to me, all she was willing to convey was a subtle shake of her head.

"Do we know where we're going from here?" asked V.

"We will in a moment. Rho was assigned to formulate an exit strategy. We're scheduled to make contact in a few minutes."

Wisteria stood, signaling to Hibiscus to climb up the ladder ahead of her. "We'll give you a bit of privacy and stay on lookout. Try and keep it on the quiet side."

A cute way of implying we might not be alone while actually saying she wanted neither herself nor Hibiscus have any idea where we were going. I could get behind that. Knowing as little as possible was the best thing for them.

While we waited, I shot Theta that grin I knew she hated. "I heard you had a hand in procuring enough fluid to top my tank off."

"Ensuring your continued function is a net benefit to me. Until I'm back in contact with Unit 9S, you should be kept in good condition."

"Wasn't the point that you wanted him because of his supposed capacity to adapt? Surprise, V was human all along. There was never anything special about the kid or me, Theta. You're not going to get that version update you're looking for out of us."

"Not in the way I initially assumed," Theta acknowledged. "But extended contact with a live human is deserving of study by itself."

"You've got to be kidding…"

"I don't. Your personal temperament toward V is interfering with your ability to process the obvious. If Unit 9S is unaffected and his continued activity is owed solely to V, where is he now?"

"Gone. Beyond you. _Out of your reach_."

"Correct," Theta said, her eyes as cool as her tone was dry. "Meaning he is somewhere V cannot reach him either. That places him on a trajectory that has a vanishingly small probability of being related to V's endeavors in the Night Kingdom."

I kept my mouth shut. This was what we could look forward to for as long as we traveled with a command unit. Her crushing grip on the big picture would be admirable if it weren't already getting on my nerves.

"In any case, I'm inclined to believe that Unit 9S is only beyond me for as long as you keep me tethered to you. There'll be time to investigate when that is no longer the case."

"That's a bold assumption."

"Is it?" Theta arched a brow at me. "Regardless of the best or worst case coming to pass, V won't be here forever."

The only reason the breath did not leave me in a low wheeze was because I didn't want the noise mistaken for a laugh. Not knowing when to give up and fall back couldn't be a good trait for a command unit. Most likely, Theta hadn't internalized yet that 9S' habit of getting irrational and vicious when he got emotional was common to V as well. He sat on the rung Wisteria had vacated, the cane rolling over the back of his fingers like lightning building in a dark cloud. His expression remained opaque and he didn't vocalize any objections, so Theta took her word as the end of the discussion. Oblivious to the warning signs of V was reconsidering her fate.

Not that I intended to tell her. Letting her learn the hard way suited me just fine.

Pod's communication interface opened, bathing Theta in dim light as she entered the key to a no-doubt private comms channel and waited.

The face and voice that answered did not belong to Rho. "Points for punctuality, Theta."

" _Hamelin_?" Hostility bolted up my back and down into my fists. It must have made a similar journey in Theta, whose voice retreated from its usual nest high in her throat to humming up from low in her chest. "Where is Rho?"

"At ease, at ease. I haven't done anything to your subordinates. Well, except take the liberty of having them relocated in advance of the 244th drop. Rho and I exchanged reports and she decided it was best that I be the one to submit this proposal for your evacuation from Sector H, subsequently providing me your personal frequency as a facilitation measure. Does that bring us up to speed?"

"...Yes and no. I value your expertise, Hamelin, but you're in R&D. You have no tactical knowledge. You'll excuse me if I'm wary of putting my confidence in a route proposed by you."

"Oh, I'm not the one who came up with it. That would be ridiculous, I'm not even in the kingdom of day anymore. After that fascinating data drop at the facility, I took my leave to share my findings. V has garnered a… Sponsor? Patron? Ah, I'm terrible with old-world terms—the point is that certain parties don't approve of military acquisition of the world's only living human. So, they're willing to place you in very capable hands to ensure V stays out of day kingdom jurisdiction."

Theta permitted herself one of those small but revealing sighs and clasped her hands together over the base of her spine. "Alright. So we can expect an escort. What's our rendezvous point?"

"The horn."

"What the _fuck_?" My voice was louder than I intended, but I couldn't make myself care. "Who would be stupid enough to go to Coquelles when the point is to escape? Even I know the horn is probably packed right now!"

"Unit 8E." Our eyes met. "Stop. _Talking."_ I'd have unloaded on her too if she weren't smoldering with distaste for this plan. I cursed under my breath and paced and Theta turned right back to Hamelin. "Her temper aside, I agree with 8E's assessment. I can't approve of the level of risk involved in taking V to Coquelles. Who did you send that would be reckless enough to take that route in the first place?'

Hamelin spared a uniquely aggravating smile. "Scheherazade."

The name didn't mean anything to me, but Hamelin might as well have told Theta we were being picked up by a second human. Her composure shattered. I hadn't seen her look so helpless and out of her depth since V had vomited salt across a table at her. Her attempt to collect herself was a matter of her remaining very still and taking a deep breath that only served to make her deflation more obvious.

"Understood. We'll rendezvous at Coquelles."

The comms channel shut off. I gave Theta the courtesy of precisely thirty seconds to collect herself before I asked. "So is Scheherazade your superior or something?"

What bits of herself she'd managed to regather slipped away all over again. I couldn't tell if it was anger, fear, or both that left her running an unsteady hand up over her face. "Her data exists in every command-functional OS. I suppose you'd call her a prototype."

Informative, but she had to be more than that too. Obsolete androids got to stick around in the Resistance, but prototypes didn't get that privilege. They were _always_ scrapped once a definitive design was decided on. "Is she like you? Legacy Reclamation first, Army second?"

"She's not a part of the Army at all and her relationship with the HHRMO is..." She frowned. Not the best for a boost in confidence. "There'll be time to explain when we're out of danger."

"There's time to explain now!"

"There isn't. I can say for certain Scheherazade will be waiting for us by the time we get there. We shouldn't waste time."

I tossed my arms up. V just shrugged. "Let's not keep her waiting."

* * *

Wisteria waved us off with the grim indifference of someone who expected us to be dead in a day. The only warmth we got from her was the genuine smile that Hibiscus nudged out of her, paired with a cordial warning that she'd shoot us on sight if we showed up in her home a second time. I liked to think her real goodbye came several minutes later. In the subtle shudder under my boots and the roar of ancient brickwork collapsing, and in the cloud of dust that coughed into the air. The first of many more like it to come as Wisteria effectively locked the doors to her home.

It wasn't for us. But it made for a nice lull while we gained some distance.

Pops of gunfire pierced the quiet at irregular intervals. Most came from the distance. Some rang out close enough that I dropped more than once into a crouch to assess where they had come from. Theta was usually down right behind me. Lack of training or shit reflexes left V last to move every time. An unidentifiable shooter that wasn't actively aiming for him was the worst possible thing to put him up against. V was good when something was coming right at him. When it was hand-to-hand, he responded to aggressive intent like it was second nature. Guns made for an odd loophole in his instincts. It was like he just didn't have anything for them, so he didn't bother trying. A stray bullet was pretty much tailor-made to bypass every defense he had.

My self-preservation routines whirred more aggressively than ever, a hum in my internal wiring that made my skin feel prickly and over sensitive. As though I could somehow compensate for V's sluggish responses.

We kept low, to shrubs and underbrush and the cover of wherever piles of junk or rubble were available at the outer edges of the stacks. A lot of androids had the same idea but were too focused on themselves to bother with us. The ones that did were in groups small enough to be dispatched quietly. Army personnel passed us overhead, in less expensive alternatives to flight units—gunships, even a bomber or two. Useless for a precise attack, but excellent for taking out large groups. Or razing the area entirely if they couldn't get it under control. If that wasn't a possibility, they wouldn't have been deployed.

For now, I wasn't worried about those. I was worried about the helicopters hovering and circling like shadowed vultures against the red sky. The damn things had scramblers so I couldn't even get Pod to put them on my map. All we could do was listen and watch the sky.

In that regard, V showed an ability to evade them that had to be supernatural. When we finally had to stop heading north and make the turn toward the shoreline, their number increased and the noise of them was too omnipresent to pinpoint one or the other. There were points where the din threatened to overload my aural sensors but he turned his head, waved his cane, and danced us through the crumbling remains of cities and outposts, always managing to keep us not just out of the way of the light but actively behind the helicopters where the pilots would have no opportunity to notice us. I think Theta and I both wanted to ask how he was doing it, but neither of us was keen on talking.

The bustle of a crowd rose on the wind. Smoke crowded out the once omnipresent scent of rust and eroded stone and metallic rot. V stopped. His grip on his cane changed. He murmured something—' _Arrow_ '?

I didn't know what that meant, but I spotted what had him on edge between the remains of shoreline structures.

They appeared as churning silhouettes with flickering green eyes. The myriad black shapes were matched only by the frequency of dim pops issuing from rifles, pistols, whatever kinds of guns either side had on hand. Resistance and Army swarmed each other, and the fore wasn't running. Even against machines, they would retreat in the face of a greater force. it was the only way for them to survive. But now they stood their ground, unleashing everything they had, fatalities be damned.

How much of that was pre-existing enmity at being abandoned, I wondered.

Theta turned off, gesturing parallel. "Let's go around."

If only it were such a neat matter. No matter how far we detoured, the shoreline was in a state of active free-for-all. The night lit up more than once with the low booms of grenades and makeshift explosives. Black smoke settled low in the air, spewing from the earth as though a volcano was on the edge of erupting. A low molten glow around us signaled that the flame would be present soon enough.

V coughed, and old, pure panic flashed down from my black box and into my legs. The panic of the previous Fern who didn't know how she was able to move so fast when she saw smoke rising from where she knew V stayed. Her horror at seeing him dragged on a singed mattress away from an entire burning row of buildings.

Smoke killed humans just as easily as fire.

My jaw creaked. "V, call Griffon."

Theta snatched my wrist and whispered harshly. "Are you _insane_? V was flaunting that damn bird up and down the stacks for weeks—everyone will know he's here!"

"Yup. And we'll kill all of them if that's what it takes to get to the shore." I closed my grip and my 4Os were at the ready. "We might not be safe, but we'll damn well be upwind."

"There has to be a better method!"

"Then think of it!" I snapped. "I'm not the fucking command model, you are! So get us through this goddamn smoke _before_ it turns into a wildfire, or I'm going to get us through it the only way I know how!"

Theta floundered. I knew she would, and it wasn't her fault. She wasn't used to the ground. She wasn't used to not having a team to command, or the moment-to-moment risks androids took to survive or having to make a dangerous decision before a bad situation went worse with her own life on the line. There was definitely a better method. There was just none of the time or support she needed to come up with it.

"Now that's what I'm talking about!" Griffon shot off V's skin, all too happy at the prospect of flaunting his power. "How many you need me to drop? Twenty? Fifty?"

"However many is necessary," said V, testing his cane. "Our aim is the station, is it not?"

"Only landmark worth going to the horn for."

Theta's lips thinned, and she pulled her twin tonfa from under her coat. They flared to life, bright and buzzing, just how I remember them. "Fine. Let's push through."

Rows of lightning marched across the terrain, illuminating it in bright plasmatic flashes of white that left blue and violet after images dancing in the dark. Shock, both literal and not, paused the battle. The first cry of awe changed it.

Griffon had not been choosy with his targets, but however many little factions were in the crowd, all of them rushed toward V like he had come to back them up. I didn't rush in, and Theta took the hint. It was important for us to stay out of Griffon's way and deal with the ones who managed to escape his attacks.

The only problem was that there were more of them than I thought. They poured out of the smoke and converged in a tighter and tighter semi-circle, piling up where they fell until the dead weight pressed in and we were getting pushed back purely by the force of literal tons of bodies pressing to get to V. Griffon wheeled down and snatched him back. Away from the crowd before they could trample him. Away from their hands that would crush him in the overeager desire to make contact. Realization dawned in a few of the closest eyes. The understanding that V could break. And that trying to stop the ones behind them might as well have been an effort to stop a wave from crashing.

They couldn't do that. I couldn't either with just the 4O fists or even with my old standard-issue sword. But I had one other weapon that had the necessary stopping power to break the wave. V would just have to forgive me for using it. Desperate times.

Mercurial gold light flared up as I gathered power. A few androids scrambled backward, but those behind only pressed in. The light grew bright.

And then I felt it. That _pressure._

The patterns that ran up and down Humility's blade flashed and erupted. In blue, in indigo, in violet, and lower still into a spectrum I could not see. But I could feel it. As a throb in my skull and a burning static in my forearms like rattling scales and gnawing swarms of locusts and the papery, thick flapping of dragonfly wings all building until my processors threatened to overload with phantom feedback.

My vision dimmed and NFCS routine took over.

When I could see again, I was in the dirt. The sword was nowhere to be seen, but I knew where it had been. Between where I began and where I'd woken up, a trail of churned parts and gouged earth pooling with spilled oil marked a snaking trail through the devastated mob.

The few left were either bold or frightened enough to push forward. Most of them had the luck to be intercepted by Theta. She only incapacitated them. One fled blindly by V, faltered at the unexpected proximity, and made the opportunistic and stupid choice to reach out toward V's cane.

He let them have it right up to the hilt.

I managed to get back to my feet while he was prizing it free. My head spun. It felt like my body had been put in a centrifuge, and pointless nausea lurched through my midsection. I had a thousand questions, but the smoke was still rising, the helicopters were still trying to track through the smoke, and we were still downwind.

"'s clear," I heaved, wobbling toward the shore. "Let's go."

"You good, lady bot? You kinda look like you're about to spew."

I shook my head. The disorientation was taking its damn time to clear up. "Just a little dizzy."

"No wonder." Theta slipped under my arm to help me stay on course. "That wasn't a part of normal heavy arms routine was it?"

Shit, how was I supposed to know?

"It wasn't," V answered gravely.

He sounded pissed, but the look on his face as he ambled through the wreckage I'd caused was more perplexed than anything. With a hint of that same apprehensive recognition as when he'd found that bracelet in the ravine. If he didn't have questions for me, I was going to have some for him.

By the time we made it to the platform, I was back on my feet and properly alert. All the better to take in the unexpected quiet. There were few if any bodies there. Less as we approached the platform until finally there was only one: A single slumped figure on the steps.

I grabbed V's shoulder. After Tau, I was wary of bodies that were slightly out of place. "Scheherazade?"

The body didn't move, but something else did. We whirred in time to see an android round the corner behind us.

She was tall as androids went. Bigger than me, but still not quite up to V's height. Dark curls swirled over light brown skin and dark brown eyes with a solemn yet blank expression. Like an animal; one of those huge herbivores that couldn't be bothered to worry about little things like androids or machines. She didn't pay me or Theta much mind. 100% of her attention was on V, and I watched in slow motion as his eyes narrowed and he went perilously loose. Far more imposing and aggressive presences had gone totally ignored by him, so I didn't know what to make of his response.

Theta was the first to recover, though I wouldn't say she relaxed. "So you…are Scheherazade…"

The stranger didn't react. I was starting to wonder if they were just some broken android we were mistaking for our escort, but she turned without a word, signaling with a curt motion of her hand that we were expected to follow.

I drew the line there. "Hey. Confirm your identity."

"You called my name already." She looked back, her face unchanged. "I am she."

That gave Theta her proper second wind. "What's our escape trajectory?"

"We will cross the tracks. On foot."

I wasn't alone in the skeptical look I sent out over the choppy ocean and the tracks just barely above the waves. "I hope you've got more than that."

She didn't respond. Barely five minutes and I felt like I was trying to have a conversation with a crocodile.

"I would also like to not be led blindly into the unknown," V pointed out.

Again Scheherazade stared at V too long. Eventually, an arm emerged from beneath her cloak and pointing across the strait. "The Sector H train is presently docked at Sorting Yard A. We will follow the tracks to that location, commandeer the train, and ride up to just before the crossing to the Stockyard. From there we will proceed north until we arrive at the agricultural zone."

"And there will be a means of transport to the night kingdom there?"

"There will be a means of transport to an intermediary island. Then to the Greenland outpost. A ship capable of completing the rest of the crossing is prepared there."

"Hamelin casually held a knife to V's throat the last time I saw her." I stepped forward, moving between V and Scheherazade. "I don't care who or what you are actually are, but I need to know where exactly you plan on taking us."

Again, Scheherazade didn't answer. Not even when my fists started to spark. She was not a crocodile; she was a whale. Breaching and receding in the vacuous sea of her silence on her own time. Willing to engage with the world beyond herself, just not willing to be moved by it.

"Is it _classified_?" I asked with a curl of my lip.

No response. No reply.

"Delivering V to the night kingdom is the desired goal," Theta cut in, diplomatically jamming a thumb in my spine to cool me down. Or at least re-direct my irritation. "However, dumping him in the environment haphazardly would only endanger his life. What is the final intended destination, and is it habitable for a human?"

The long stretch of silence cooled me down a little. It wasn't just me. She answered on her own time no matter who was talking to her. "Through the northwestern passages and down through the North American tundra, there is a place with no name. That is where I will take V. His life will not be in danger there."

"What's there? Hamelin?"

Scheherazade shook her head and again made the signal to follow, seemingly done with the chore of conversation. Theta took point to walk behind her, and I kept up the rear. Having nothing but inky waters on either side of us kept all of us quiet and focused on the task of walking forward without falling in. It afforded me no real bandwidth to collect my thoughts about our escort, and neither did our blessed arrival back on dry land.

The main island of Sector H was burning.

The smolder on the mainland was nothing compared to the blaze that lit up the night and choked the sky here. Trucks and buses burned in the street, shattered glass glowing like cold embers under our feet. Rust on the ocean air lost to the reek of burnt fabric and charred silicone and the wind smelled like smoke and spilled gasoline. Androids were everywhere around us, but the roar of unseen jets overhead and a surprising amount of anti-air resistance from the rooftops meant we were the last things on anybody's mind.

Scheherazade paid the carnage about as much mind as she paid anything else. Her focus was the train and we found it exactly where she said it would be. Two of the cars were on fire, and another had clearly been subject to a small-grade explosive.

"Board the front." She sounded like she was reading from an instruction manual. "I will meet you there."

We left her to duck into the first car pointing further inland and I squinted at the controls. There was no conductor, which simplified things for me. It meant I just had to get the thing set on whatever auto-pilot feature usually handled the process. Figuring out exactly how to do that took a bit of trial and error, but I couldn't go wrong with a big button that lit up green after I adjusted a few partially familiar dials.

Outside, a series of shouts answered the sound of the cars all lurching forward. Androids rushed toward us, shooting at each other as they approached. Some were definitely aiming to stop us, while others ran after us like hell was on their heels, hoping that they'd be able to get away with their lives if they managed to climb aboard.

I grabbed Theta and pulled her toward the controls. "See that lever? Push it forward _slowly_ until Pod tells you it's dangerous."

"That is an incredibly nebulous request!"

"Yeah well, I don't have any idea how fast this fucking bucket can go or what kind of speed will make it fly apart, so figure it out!" Griffon was already coming off V's body, but I smacked the bird back down as I passed him. "Keep the chicken in this time and keep out of sight. Anybody sees you as long as we're on the train, they know exactly where you're going and where you'll be until we hop off."

I found Scheherazade pinned down in the sixth car. She was surrounded by a dozen very dead androids sprawled over the seats and half-out of the windows. A dozen more were firing at her while she used two bodies to shield herself.

A pod would've been useful, but high agility and the advantage of using fists in the tight space meant the guns were not an insurmountable problem. I darted in and out of the broken windows, punching and weaving and doing my best to ensure I pierced something vital on every strike and kept up with the train as it began to chug past the platform and through the burning city. The moment she was able, Scheherazade laid down suppressive fire with one of any number of dropped guns and began to fall back. To give me room to work, I assumed. Fancy model or not, she wasn't a YoRHa.

Soon we were going too fast for all but the most desperate to risk an attempt to latch on. Another car full of androids stared me down through the blown-open threshold to the next car. Trying to decide if they felt brave or not while I stood there calmly, fists in hand and surrounded by any gun I could want. They were in the middle of laying down their weapons when both cars jostled roughly, sending all of us to our knees.

I turned around, and my chest contracted.

My fists de-materialized and I charged through the cloud of sparks left behind, ignoring the door in favor of rushing up onto the seats, out the window and swinging up onto the roof. A few androids had intelligently climbed up there too. They scurried back from me, pointing guns that shook too much to target me properly. One or two sobs of relief vanished into the wind behind me as I ignored them.

My boots pounded along the corrugated metal. Up to the fifth car. The fourth. By the third, I could see the first car and the growing gap between it and the edge of the second. My processing sped up as I considered my options. The world slowed.

Inhale. Exhale.

Steam. Wind. Screams. Gunfire. Train wheels. Door hinges. Boot steps. Smoke. The gap.

V.

He stood in the open door at the end of the first car. Eyes on the cars. The growing space between where I was and where I needed to be. Eyes up. On me. Gauging the distance between us. That shitty smirk on his mouth and in his eyes.

Inhale. Exhale.

 _is that all you're worried about,_ they mocked. Knowing full well it was beyond my abilities. Knowing full well it was too fucking far.

A raised brow. So frustratingly arrogant. So infuriatingly full of expectation.

_Are you coming or not?_

I inhaled. I exhaled.

I leaped.

His mouth moved. I couldn't hear him over the wind, but I saw Pod's case open and a thin mercurial wire program that I recognized all too well shot out. It lassoed around me at the apex of my jump and I grabbed it and let myself be yanked forward, right past V and into the car. He didn't say anything, but I caught him smirking as he closed the door behind us.

He was crazy. Hell, _I_ must have been crazy.

And Scheherazade must have been out of her fucking mind.

There was no point in confronting her about what had just happened. I'm sure if I hadn't made it, she would've said something damning yet totally lacking in malice. 'She'll catch up or she won't' or some similarly soft version of 'it's not my responsibility if she dies'. And it wasn't. I had no doubt that if Theta had been the one to go assist, she would have left Theta just as readily. We didn't really exist to her.

Because neither of us were V.

Knowing it wasn't personal should have helped. It had in the past, with people far more abrasive than her. It didn't. I hated her so much I almost started laughing because I didn't know what else to do to let out the caged and furious thing that had suddenly taken residence under my plates. Because she was _wrong_. Willingness to throw away anything so long as V was secured and preserved was a factually incorrect method of protecting him.

The old Fern had the right of it: You couldn't sacrifice things that were _his_. Even if you hated them.

Some part of me found light in the realization that I was on the other side of that thought now. 49 had said before we entered Normandy that I belonged with them. And the moment something looked off, V made good on that. He had come looking for me. He had ensured without request or expectation that I didn't get separated from him, even if it was by being a bastard at me from a distance.

I'd have liked to enjoy such a small, fleeting moment of grace.

Instead, I sat, crossed my legs, and committed Scheherazade's first sin to memory while the train rolled on.


	18. Search and Destroy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 381-394: To take back the future.

Pod 006 brought them coffee and toast on a white trolley with white plates and white cups with translucent white lids.

The implication of dedicated utensils was barely a mystery next to that how they came up with fresh food. On Earth, it was possible that the plants that produced coffee and grains were still around and even that there was a sector dedicated to their cultivation or preservation. But they were in space. And the manifests suggested only water and repair supplies had come up here in the last five years.

"PROPOSAL: EAT UP," one of the 006 subunits urged. "THERE'S ENOUGH FOR BOTH OF YOU."

9S turned slowly to 10H. She was flat on the floor with 801S hunched over her abdomen, staunching gel applicator in hand. When she noticed his expectant look, she merely shrugged.

"It's fine. I ate already." As if that was the problem here. "006 makes me eat every morning."

_Every morning? How? Where are they getting that much supply?_

"I'm busy," 801S mumbled, distractedly. "And androids don't need to eat."

"I tell them that all the time," 10H sighed, the way 9S might have if this was a normal work-related annoyance. "But they insist breakfast has an important effect on the rest of the day."

Curiosity and the expectant looming of Pod 006 won. 9S could tell the toast was supposed to be warm, but the heat had dissipated and all that was left was a dry crunchiness with an uninspiring taste. It had the unpleasant effect of absorbing all the lubricant in his mouth, creating a coarse, doughy mess that packed into the crevices between his teeth and made his tongue feel like a strip of old tire spinning in damp sand. The coffee had an attractive aroma, but the taste brought him instantly back to his failed first attempt at tea. Same relentlessly bitter experience, just without the soupy texture.

Coffee and toast were stereotypical as quick old-world breakfast choices went. He didn't know what they were supposed to taste like, but he had to imagine the Pod had gotten it wrong somewhere. Oranges had been fantastic, meat messy but interesting, and clovers and tea merely unremarkable by themselves; this was the first correctly made food he'd tasted that was _bad_.

"Isn't it weird to give food to people you were shooting at a minute ago?"

"DISMISSAL," they chirped. "WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE."

"What's that mean?"

"EXPLANATION: THE PRESENT IS NOT THE SAME AS THE PAST. IT IS A SAYING FROM THE ARCHIVE. YOU ARE HERE NOW, IT WOULD BE BAD MANNERS TO NOT OFFER YOU SOMETHING."

"I guess that makes sense…"

"REMINDER: IT WOULD ALSO BE BAD MANNERS TO WASTE FOOD. BE SURE TO FINISH YOUR MEAL."

The pod dismissed itself before 9S could argue. 801S continued to blatantly ignore the tray in favor of patching 10H, so 9S was left frowning at the trolley of food by himself. All pods had personalities but Pod 006 had _a lot_ of personality. The last thing he wanted was for Pod 153 to successfully convince Pod 006 that there was no reason to fight only for the whole situation to trip up on something like not finishing some toast. He wouldn't put it past them to get insulted. Even if the only thing more miraculous than them making food in this environment was how they'd made it so much of a chore to consume.

With a glance around to be sure they were alone, he covertly gave the rest of the toast to Shadow, who gratefully absorbed it and distressed both 10H and 801S with the chewing sound that came from inside her chest.

9S took his time with the coffee. Now that he knew what to expect, the bitterness wasn't the worst thing in the world.

The hatch room was enormous, but it was just as white and smooth as everything else. From the inside, the entrance had a white lever with scorch marks imprinted on it in the obvious ridged imprint of hands and fingers. The electromagnetic reaction he felt must have been a result of her touching it. The other side of the room had a normal door like any he might have seen on the Bunker, bent and beaten out of shape. Pod 153 was beyond it, engaging in the data exchange that would determine what happened next. Which could be anything.

"801S," he called quietly. "Do you want a weapon?"

"No thanks." He straightened up from beneath one 10H's waist panel and patted it closed. "If my terrible reflexes didn't make it obvious, I'm not calibrated for a combat environment. Now's not the time to try and adjust that. If it comes down to it, I already have what I need."

Meaning the loose black box sitting beside him. 9S didn't know where the other one was and tried not to twist at his coat worrying about it.

"So…" he said, uncomfortably switching away from the subject. "How long have you been in here, 10H?"

"About five years… I'm pretty sure they pre-inserted my assignment and I was activated on-site."

"You said something about the ocean out there. How'd you end up trying to escape if you thought there'd be water?"

"Didn't matter." She sat up with a wince, clasping at the patched wound, and for several moments simply stared at the scorch marks on the lever that led to the outside. "There's a partition in my memory area with coordinates that lead here. I just wanted to see what was so important I'd put it in a protected area. But when I came out here Pod 006 _shot_ me. So I thought 'hell with it, if I have to die I'll take them down with me!'." Weary dullness crept into her eyes. "I think it must've happened that way lots of times. I'm not really sure. A lot of the past few years are kind of…"

"Blurry," 9S supplied solemnly.

"Yeah." She stared at her hands, splaying her mangled fingers. "All I do is check the servers and repair the pods, so I have a lot of free time and Pod 006 was always helping me waste it. Creating routines and keeping me occupied so I wouldn't think too much." Her mouth pressed into a crooked line and she glared miserably when half of her digits refused to curl back into fists. "I wouldn't have anything to think about if my condition was good, but it probably takes them a long time just to put me back together, much less fix these little things."

"With no Bunker, there's probably been no automated shipments up here," 9S guessed. "You must've been accruing damage quicker than it could be repaired."

"She has." 801S reached out with surprising gentleness, loosening her fingers back into a relaxed position and smoothing at the ridges in her heat-warped skin. "I've never seen signal relays that look like yours. You've been adjusted to compensate for damage I can only guess at without a full diagnostic, and your nerve sensors are practically offline."

She frowned and skeptically retracted her hands, hiding them under her crossed arms. "Aren't you an S type?"

"I'm—I _was_ a late-stage prototype. Stationed in maintenance and R&D for a year under 7H."

"7H is still—?!" The smile that startled out of 10H vanished that quickly, dragged away by the answer she already had. And even though there were YoRHa left to tell her about, 7H wasn't one of them. Her fingers twitched, half of them clutching tight to her skirt. "I don't get it… I don't get why you two are here. If the Bunker is gone and the war is over, what are you doing here? What's the point?"

"ASSURANCE: THIS POD WILL PROVIDE THAT REPORT."

The three of them clambered to their feet. Pod 153 entered first, and a dozen Pod 006 units wafted in after, circling her like the petals of a bright red flower. One broke off to address them.

"REPORT: DATA EXCHANGE WITH YORHA SUPPORT UNIT POD 153 COMPLETE. CONCLUSION: ALL REPORTS ACCEPTED AS FACT."

"Wait, was that ever in question?" 9S asked. "It's not like pods lie."

"REMINDER: PODS ARE REQUIRED TO LIE BY OMISSION AS PART OF STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE."

"To each _other_?"

"QUERY: WHY SHOULD IT BE DIFFERENT BETWEEN PODS WHO DO NOT SHARE A COMMON ASSIGNMENT?"

9S fell silent, unsure of how to take that.

801S kept them on task. "Have you decided we don't need to be eliminated, then?"

"CONFIRMATION: IT WOULD BE A WASTEFUL EXPENDITURE OF RESOURCES."

"And 10H? She can be left alone without another reset, right?"

"AFFIRMATIVE. ADMISSION: IT IS QUITE THE LOAD OFF OUR MINDS. I DON'T THINK WE WANTED TO RESET 10H AGAIN. DID WE?" A chorus of 'NO's and 'NOT AT ALL's answered. Sub-units didn't usually talk, but the more of Pod 006 he saw, the more 9S got the impression they were a pod group made entirely of networked primary units. "ASSUMPTION: IT MUST BE A RELIEF FOR YOU AS WELL, 10H."

10H simply stared, her eyes wide and bewildered. The only one in the room who didn't know exactly what was going on was her, and she looked terribly alone as she struggled to find a point of entry. "How many times did you reset me?"

"WARNING: THIS INFORMATION MAY CAUSE SIGNIFICANT DISTRESS."

"Shut up! Just tell me!"

"REPORT: 66."

She laughed, in a cracked, familiar way that left 9S reaching out clumsily to comfort her before the tears had even welled in her eyes. The pods circled around her, calming her with a variety of soothing platitudes so cliché even 9S was insulted by them. 'Time heals all wounds' could never have been anything less than trite, but from the pod who had personally erased her the phrase was so insensitive it circled back around into absurdity.

One of the pods turned and gestured toward the inner door. "PROPOSAL: GIVE US SOME PRIVACY."

9S and 801S shuffled awkwardly out of the first hatch room, through the second even larger one, and into the facility proper.

White walls, white floors, white ceilings, white stairs, white railings, white lights. _Everything_ was white, to the point of mild spatial disorientation. There was no easily understood wheel and spoke pattern to navigate by, which didn't help. The wide halls stretched one into the other in arbitrary turns and T-sections and the staircases led up or down completely at random. A surprising amount of glass allowed glimpses into the pairs of rooms that lined a given corridor. Red pods filled each one, chattering busily to each other at white terminals. Busy red bees in a stark white hive.

"9S."

The low wariness wrapped around his name made him gulp. "Yeah?"

"Does it feel like this place was designed to be hard to get out of?"

A group of pods caught him staring and waved. "Yeah. It's not just you."

10H had spent five years in this prison. With her wardens all around and the architecture itself against her, he couldn't tell if sixty-six escape attempts was too few or too many.

Most likely, it had gone the same for her as it had for 9S. The more attempts he made, the more artifacts of previous lives were left, and the more mistrustful he became. Even then, his suspicions were mitigated by how common it was to lose memory, lose a body, lose all sorts of things in the course of duty. Meeting someone new who had already met you several times before wasn't rare. Sudden, unexpected death wasn't abnormal.

10H was alone up here and it sounded like she seldom had to deal with physical labor— _any_ damage was abnormal. If Pod 006 was only capable of basic repairs and calibration, there was no way 10H hadn't been fully destroyed and provided a new body several times over the course of her many escapes. Androids didn't scar, but disrepair told all the same stories that scars could. A conspicuous absence of information about why her body was in poor shape would obviously accelerate her toward the truth even if she wasn't an S type. There would be no need for adjustments extreme enough to shock 801S if Pod 006 still had access to new bodies.

Nausea crept up through 9S' stomach as he wondered how many of those sixty-six escapes had taken place between the war's end and now. The same body, damaged, patched, reset, and rebooted over and over to diminishing effect.

A pair of 006 units waved and met them at a T-section as though they'd been waiting. "GRATITUDE: 10H IS SENSITIVE TO NEW INFORMATION AND WILL NEED SOME TIME TO PROCESS THINGS. PROPOSAL: WE SHOULD DISCUSS YOUR GOAL IN THE MEANTIME."

It took a moment for 9S to realize the conversation was meant to be continuous. He and 801S had been walking undisturbed for almost ten minutes despite being surrounded by other 006 units. "Is that alright for you to do?"

"CONFIRMATION: THERE IS NO REASON FOR US ABIDE BY PROTOCOLS RELATED TO THE CLASSIFIED NATURE OF THIS FACILITY AS HUB FOR THE COUNCIL OF HUMANITY."

"Then what is there to discuss?" asked 801S.

"EXPLANATION: WHILE THE FORMER STATEMENT IS TRUE, WE HAVE DECIDED TO DEFEND THIS FACILITY WITHIN INTERNALLY AGREED UPON PARAMETERS." Beyond the glass on either side of the hall, scores of pods turned in unison, their activity replaced with sudden, intent stillness. "CAUTION: ANY ATTEMPTS AT PHYSICAL DESTRUCTION WILL BE MET WITH LETHAL FORCE. QUERY: ARE WE UNDERSTOOD?"

"Loud and clear. Blowing the place up while we're in here isn't my ideal outcome for this situation either."

"PROPOSAL: YOU WILL NOT MIND HANDING OVER THE EXTRA BLACK BOXES, THEN."

"I would, actually." He crossed his arms. "You did just say Pods are liars."

The two pods looked at each other and clicked their claws in seemingly amused applause. "ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: THAT IS TRUE. BUT THIS IS NOT A REQUEST. IF YOU CANNOT AGREE, WE MUST RESPECTFULLY PROPOSE THAT YOU HIT THE BRICKS."

"What bricks, this is the moon!"

9S stepped between them. 801S' face was starting to darken in the same way 4S' did before he went off. "Woah, woah, we've already agreed we don't have a reason to fight other, so let's just calm down and work this out, okay? Pod 006, can you at least point us in the right direction first?"

"APOLOGY: THIS POD'S INTERACTIONS WITH STORED PROGRAMS, ATTACHED NETWORKS, AND/OR OTHER DATA STORED CONTAINED WITHIN THE SERVERS ARE LIMITED."

"Can you help us search?"

"NEGATIVE. NEITHER POD 006 NOR UNIT 10H ARE PERMITTED TO INTERACT WITH NON-ARCHIVAL INFORMATION ON THESE SERVERS."

Of course. If this was originally the storage location for the data on the human genome that the gestalt era Devola and Popola sent up, no YoRHa affiliated entity would be given free access to it. Not even a pod. 006 was, in the end, here to facilitate the illusion of the Council of Humanity and nothing more.

"Neither are we," 801S pointed out.

"THIS POD CONTAINS NO PROTOCOLS PERTAINING TO SERVER INTERACTIONS BY UNITS OTHER THAN 10H AND POD UNIT 006. THIS POD ALSO LACKS THE AUTHORITY TO DECIDE UPON OR ENACT DISCIPLINARY MEASURES UNRELATED TO THE DIVULGENCE, DISCOVERY, OR DAMAGE OF THIS LOCATION. THE HUMAN SUBJECT DESIGNATED 'V' ACTIVELY FACILITATED THIS MISSION. THIS REPRESENTS THE ONLY SITUATIONALLY RELEVANT INFORMATION FROM A POTENTIAL COMMAND SOURCE ON FILE."

"What does that translate to in this scenario? Non-interference?"

"AFFIRMATIVE: THIS POD WILL NEITHER ASSIST NOR IMPEDE PROGRESS PROVIDED IT DOES NOT AFFECT THE PHYSICAL STATE OF THE SERVER OR THE SURROUNDING STRUCTURE."

"That's fine," 9S said, with a look to 801S that urged him to be reasonable. "This is just back to Plan A. We find it ourselves; we deal with the defenses ourselves."

With only a mild scowl, 801S surrendered both the black boxes.

"REPORT: GRATITUDE! NOW, YOU HAVE A GREAT DEAL OF WORK AHEAD OF YOU. PROPOSAL: I WILL BRING YOU MORE COFFEE."

"No thanks!" 9S blurted, hastily tacking on: "We'll be hacking, so it'll just get cold."

"AH. OF COURSE. UPDATED PROPOSAL: SHALL I TAKE YOU TO SERVER ROOM #1?"

"Good a place as any. How many server rooms are there anyway?"

"REPORT: 40."

9S took a deep breath. Beside him, 801S began wrangling his hair into a single long braid.

* * *

**00:43:03 – Server Room #1**

The network of the lunar server is as white as the facility that houses it, equally well protected, and vast as the moon beyond.

9S enjoys a brief lull after another attack barrier is destroyed. It is too early to become disheartened, and pointless to be impatient, but he struggles with both these feelings. If the rest are like the first, each of the individual server rooms house complexes of data that put the launch facility to shame. Variation is absent. Nothing marks one area from another. White blocks of data loom on equal-height white planes connected to other equal-height white planes with yet more blocks, on and on like the shipping records at Horizon-1 if they had no cutoff point. Entire cities of information sprawl before him with no way markers. There is no directory to search. No easy chronology to the organization of the data. The packet launched to the moon by the original Devola and Popola models should be the first record, but it is nowhere to be found in the contents of Server Room #1.

Most of it is human medical research dating as far back as a century before the 6/12 incident. Even these are organized by subject matter. Publication dates or file creation dates only become obvious once the data block related to a given subject is accessed. These must be the archives that provide the Pods so much intel on the old world. But it is not what 9S is looking for.

A diamond shape identical to his own moves by him on the same plane, investigating a series of ports on a now-clear row of blocks.

"Nope," 801S reports. "None of these. Let's move on."

9S cannot remember ever hacking into anything at the same time as another scanner. The ark had been different. Similarly massive, but maximally compatible with their framework so that it was no different from walking around in physical space. Here, they are a pair of intruders in a system that was never designed to articulate them. He's never imagined having help in a space like this.

He likes it. They reach a little less ground than they would if they split up, but they cover that ground twice as fast as he would alone. A rate that is increasing as 801S grows more accustomed.

The younger scanner is somewhat less focused here than outside. He has played the simulations of known hacking patterns, and probably eliminated viral loads in his patients' bodies, but never has he contended with any aggressive barriers in a capacity that might leave him with real damage. It would be of little help if he had. The hacking patterns employed by the lunar server are more dynamic than any 9S has ever encountered among machines.

801S glides along beside him, less timid than he was only thirty minutes ago, and 9S can't help a little swell of pride. "You seem happy."

"How can you tell?"

"Uh…" 9S pauses and spins slowly side to side. "It's kind of hard to say, actually. Intuition?"

801S hums like he's unsure if he's supposed to believe that or not. "It's nothing special, I just remembered you were at my orientation."

"Me? I always assumed 4S was there since you guys are close."

"Nope. You and 32S." His laughter sounds all the softer for the hard, harsh angles that surrounded them. "Both of you were really disappointed I couldn't shadow you since I wasn't going to be assigned ground-side. Kind of funny I ended up with you after all."

"…What was I like?"

"Friendly. All of you were, in your own ways. Even 11S. All of you made me feel… welcome."

It does not escape 9S that this is his second time seeing 801S soften like this. The same memories of the Bunker that only seemed to sharpen his determination also bring a silent but unembarrassed nostalgia over him. One that 9S knows well. What he treasures most are the times when he was doing nothing with 2B, and it is obvious that 801S treasures similarly mundane memories.

9S suspects that 3S is just one piece to the full shape what the youngest scanner treasures most.

**35:14:03 – Server Room #3**

"801S wait!"

It is too late. The self-closing algorithm surrounds the other scanner and his mobile consciousness vanishes in a violent burst of red and black.

9S retreats, interrupting the connection to return to his body. He wakes on a thin blanket. The white of the server room and the white of the server network are similar enough that panic spikes through him. It has every time they have switched server rooms. Disorientation takes longer than it should to pass, but as soon as he is able to connect with the weight of his own body, he's at least able to move.

801S is beside him and 10H is bent over him, their previous positions swapped. His eyes are clenched shut.

"10H?" 9S gurgles. "Is he—"

"I'm fine," he wheezes, propping himself up on his elbows with a sharp hiss.

"He's not," 10H counters peevishly, swiping at a trio of diagnostic screens hovering around her head. "His signal relay was affected and there's an interrupted routine in his processing cortex. You can't let things like that fester. I'll correct it, but after that, he needs some rest. Both of you do. You've been at it for a day and a half."

"It's not your problem."

The bull-headed answer surprises 9S. It does not match up with 801S who is level and pragmatic and even less the one who had berated him for negligence with his repairs.

10H cocks two fingers and flicks his forehead. One misfires with no more than a twitch. The other connects and snaps 801S' neck back, sending him writhing to the floor clutching his head with a dazed groan. The look she gives 9S says clearly that he will get the same treatment if he's too stubborn. "I'm the primary custodian here, and I'm still an H unit. Take a break or I'll have Pod 006 lock you out of the server rooms."

There are no doors on any of the server rooms, but the threat is not idle. A few hundred pods are more than enough as a deterrent even if they aren't lethal. Still, 9S lingers on her. She looks different. Not better—her repair state is still awful—but there is a restless energy around her.

"You heard everything," he ventures.

"I did." Some of the self-assurance goes out of her and she averts her focus back to 801S. "I don't want to talk about it. Just take a break, alright? You're not on a time limit. It doesn't help anybody if you two break down. Least of all me."

9S relaxes back onto the floor to the sound of 10H making her repairs. Shadow's curious sniffing tickles at his face, and her always surprising weight slumps down beside him when she satisfies herself that he's only tired. She clearly doesn't need to breathe any more than he does, but he marks the rhythm of her body's expansion and contraction against his side, metronomic as the resting pulse of his own black box.

"This is what it was like on the ground the whole time..." 801S' voice is a murmur. Quiet and unresisting, but tight with disappointment. "The other scanners went through so much more than this… The least I can do—"

"Is do it _carefully_ ," says 10H.

801S is a soldier too. A scanner. Regardless of his hybridized specs and permanent assignment to the Bunker, he must have hated it to watch others like him face death while he remained sheltered and safe.

9S can't know exactly what it must have been like, but the remains of 9H resonate within him.

**99:03:12 – Server Room # 12**

They agree to progress through no more than three server rooms per twenty-four-hour period, breaking for status checks between each and mostly sleeping away any extra time. Rest leaves more room for curiosity when they are ahead of schedule (and they often are now, 801S has gotten very good very quickly), and as the hours become days, more and more 9S pauses to peruse some of the strange data from the past.

There is an odd mural with three eyes and a dozen concentric rings of angelic text. He has no language pack to decipher it, but he recognizes that there are only four letters, repeating again and again as they expand outward.

There is a recording in a familiar voice, telling a story of the end of the world and the black and white books. It's unclear to him why it is lying. The black book was never evil; the white book never a savior. They were two parts of a single system. He already knows this, so he's not sure what the purpose of this alternate retelling is for.

There is a digitized ledger full of invoices associated with the gestaltification process that fills him with a heavy, sludgy emotion he doesn't recognize. It's natural for an android to be expensive. They are parts and they must be found, forged, constructed, connected. Calibration and optimized operation cost even more. Gestaltification must have taken some pretty specialized machinery but the rows and rows of six-digit figures baffle 9S. He's never managed to have anywhere near that much and imagines most humans didn't either. So what became of them? It is one thing if technology at the time wasn't good enough to handle the capacity requirements of housing all of humanity's data—there were billions of them once. But how could there have been any regard at all for money in a situation where saving their own species was the goal?

He reasons the payments must have covered some of the cost associated with the construction of replicants over the course of thousands of years, but rationalizing doesn't leave him any less unsettled.

There is a complete report from the Hamelin Organization on the grimoires, which confirms exactly how many had been created: Thirteen in total. This is the first time he's seen deeper details about the activities of the Hamelin Organization, so he digs in a little more while they have the time. Most of the reports are redacted and rather than any neat listing of the thirteen grimoires, he finds himself looking down a list of words. There is no indication what kind of words they are or what their importance is. All the description says is that they are Words. Over a hundred of them scroll by and not one matches anything in his language packs. He abandons the effort, trying again to identify more about the grimoires, but to minimal reward. The only new information he finds regards a Grimoire called 'Rubrum' and even then, only the details of her purpose as an assistant to Weiss and Noir.

There are news articles speculating over the whereabouts of the red dragon from the era when it went missing. Someplace called Roswell? He marks this as important and sets it aside. If the coordinates can be identified, he can send that to V as well.

There is a list behind an attack barrier so aggressive that 801S' mobile consciousness is destroyed and 9S loses two of his shields to it.

The list is of names. Human names, with firsts and lasts, given and family in conventions that speak of a wide range of languages and attached cultures. They are split into five groups of twenty according to no criteria 9S can understand, but under each are the details of android manufacturing sites. One of them even specifies the Council of Humanity, and though a sucking hollow opens in his body, he cannot help but look into it.

_Council of Humanity scheduled communications will be generated by personalities embedded into the operational system… to be based on updates from parties Clearance Level S or above…_

His mind spins.

He'd wondered, far down below the long list of his other more pressing concerns, how those messages were generated. He'd seen the darkened On-Air sign in one of the halls of the lunar server. It had struck him oddly and left him staring for several moments before he realized there was no glass anywhere near it. One of few rooms that could not be seen into. The transmission room beyond its door had been empty, and he had been operating under the assumption that Pod 006 generated those stiff, unnatural sounding messages. That does not appear to be the case.

Ghosts. Those scheduled communications with their empty, overly formal words come from groups of digitized ghosts running as algorithms in an endless loop. What this means for the manufacturing sites, he does not know, and decides resolutely that he doesn't care enough to find out.

**167:44:44 – Server Room #19**

A thunderous crash shocks 9S awake.

"Go away! Just get the fuck away from me!"

The voice belongs to 10H, though it is so distorted with rage it is barely recognizable. A dark stain seeps past the open threshold of the server room. Matching brown-black droplets float sluggishly toward the white floors in the low gravity. A chill of terror snaps 9S into full consciousness, but it is not raw oil. It's far too thin and the smell isn't right.

It's coffee.

"REPORT," Pod 006 says with an unusually hesitant voice. "WE… WE WILL CLEAN THIS UP LATER."

Through the windows deeper inside the server room, he and 801S watch a single red pod flee. 10H does not appear. All they hear is the crunch of white plates and white cups and white plastic under her heavy heels. Her grunts deteriorate into panting. Into wretched gasps as her damaged body struggles to ventilate. The thud as she collapses. Then it's quiet again.

801S makes a gesture for 9S to stay where he is and ventures into the hall.

Around him, the 006 units at their white terminals are still. None of them face him. Or each other. A score of the same pod, too ashamed to look at anyone, even itself, so they stare straight ahead at their screens without working.

Pod 153 drifts low, closer than usual to 9S, her digits flexing and wringing. While he doesn't trust himself to comfort 10H, it's easy to reach up and rests a hand on Pod 153's case. Alone together with the whir of server fans and 10H's muffled sobs and the combined weight of a hundred and fourteen lost lives pushing in on all of them.

**249:01:08 – Server Room #28**

Pain and aberrations welcome 9S back to his body.

They have found it. They must have found it because there is no other reason for the defenses that wrack his body even now.

He can hear 801S calling, feel him gripping at 9S's perfectly fitted, too-small coat. 10H appears in his smudged periphery with an injector. Pain in his leg. Then relief pours through him like a cool coat of menthol. Her fingers press too hard at the back of his neck and make him jolt and his senses dim to the sound of her apologizing for the clumsiness of her damaged fingers.

_"Have you met him?"_

_"No. I've only seen him in 9S' memories."_

_"What's he like?"_

9S is not fully awake yet. But he can hear them. Talking about V, he realizes belatedly. 801S sounds almost impatient to be off the subject.

_"Tall. Look, there's no point in getting interested in him. He's not from this world and he's trying to leave it. I don't even think he's entirely human."_

_"What? What do you think he is?"_

_"I think he's more like us. A human, but with something else mixed in."_

9S' eyes part in time to see 10H touch at her chest. At where the black box lies underneath. "Does that disqualify him from being human at all…?"

"I wasn't trying to…" 801S stops. It is a sensitive subject for all of them. It might always be. "I just want you to think about it for yourself. About whether he deserves the loyalty you might be feeling toward him."

"I don't know if it's loyalty." She laughs a little, weakly. "I don't know what my thoughts are on it at all, really. Other than maybe it was all worth it if he really is out there, you know? How is it for you?"

"I'm grateful he got 9S this far."

"That's _all_?"

"I've never been especially invested in humanity. The most exciting thing about him is how angry he seems about YoRHa in 9S' memories. We are what we were made to be, but that doesn't mean we asked for this, or that we deserve this kind of fate. I don't want to accept it. I never did. But I also never thought…" He rubs at his shoulder and smooths both hands gently down over the end of his braid. "I never expected anyone else to be angry on our behalf."

"Hm. He sounds nice…"

"Not really, he's kind of a shit."

9S sputters laughter that brings both to guilty attention. 801S isn't wrong, it's just that 10H is also right.

"Easy," 10H warns, immediately coming to his side. "How are you feeling?

"Still in one piece," he grates, rubbing at his head as he sits up. "How long has it been?"

"REPORT: 127 MINUTES."

"You made it out okay, 801S?"

"I disconnected as soon as you warned me to. What the heck happened in there? The attack patterns were everywhere and the thing that homed in on you didn't look like anything we've seen before. What _was_ that?"

9S slowly crosses his arms. "A self-closing algorithm. Designed to target consciousness data that only a YoRHa would have."

"Anti-YoRha defenses? Does that mean…?" 801S' eyes light with new, glimmering intensity. "We found the right server."

9S hums, giving his mind time to get back up to speed He'd gotten caught in the formation of violet attack patterns. Between trying to weave his way around them and clear a path through whatever was destructible, he hadn't had any room to avoid the advanced targeting protocol. Hadn't recognized in time that it was not like the flashing orange ones he was used to. Black instead, and in spite of still having one defensive barrier left, it had bypassed it entirely and started eating into his mobile consciousness core.

"Is it something you can counter for?" asks 10H.

"Sure," 9S answers in a mumble of distracted processing. "Non-viral algorithms don't evolve, so I could put together a counter for it. But that won't help against the rest. I can't think of a defense I _didn't_ see loading in. They're really going for the overkill method."

"Can we still do it with just the two of us?"

Having his expertise yielded to is less gratifying than it would be in a less dire situation. He doesn't know what they're dealing with and doesn't have the heart to tell 801S that he has never seen anything like it. Half a minute and they were scraping to get through before an unknown came out of nowhere and very nearly took him out. He knows better than to think that was anywhere near the end of the full force of what they will need to push through. It's not something only two scanners can handle.

Not as they are.

"I don't think it's undoable," he says slowly.

"But?"

"We need better coordination. Full coordination, as instantaneous as possible. Can we use the cable?"

801S' eyes widen with the boyish excitement that is characteristic of scanners freed to indulge a new idea. "The cable…! Yeah, that's about as instant as you can get. But are you sure? You're not accustomed to the speed. And I'm not accustomed to big hacking jobs like this."

"Then we'll practice on less aggressive patterns in other servers to get the hang of it. 10H can cover any hacking damage we take, and when we're ready we can go up against the real thing."

"Gonna be on call then I guess…" 10H sighs gloomily. "Can we take our time, boys? I'd rather not have another scare like this one."

"Of course," 9S says, with a confident smile. "We can't do this if we don't all work together."

**316:30:21 Server #28**

Hacking while connected to another scanner begins as a conversation. One that occurs in the space of a second, but a conversation no less. An exchange of impulses and warnings that require the echo of acknowledgment, processing, and control to execute into motion and attacks.

The margin is down to half a second when they decide they are ready to challenge the pattern in server #28.

Firewalls close in. Seeking protocols loose from all corners of the vast white plane. Proximity traps crop into being practically on top of them. The YoRHa counter-algorithm moves in pitch black arrows camouflaged by their slow implacability among an otherwise hectic and chaotic battlefield. The attack patterns grow denser with time, unparalleled and unyielding in their aggression until neither scanner can see for the bright particles clogging the space. They are obliterated more than once, but each time the margin of response between the two scanners is smaller and smaller.

Until it finally it disappears.

What results is a synchronicity of action that surpasses the need for thought. While they may be adaptive, the defenses are merely patterns in the end. Algebraic functions that will always yield the same results given the same starting parameters. The same positions will always be safe. The same openings will always arise. The only thing that they have to focus on is being in position.

They know exactly where They are and where They need to be in relation to one another at all times. Sometimes they mirror one another. Sometimes they move independently in ways that do not make sense at the outset. It isn't unlike the hand dexterity game BB taught 9S—moving his body where it needs to be in full trust that 801S will meet him at the correct moment. They are beyond the natural, subconscious concern for the other's safety that comes with being two individuals. They flow together, and it feels like that is the way it's always been.

It makes for a jarring experience when there are suddenly no more bullets. No more attacks. The field is empty and quiet.

A lack of motion and need to attack allows them to separate back into two minds. Once more a conversation, though that gap is easily closed at less than a second's notice.

_Is it over?_

_Is it over?_

_Nothing's happening._

_I don't see anything._

_We did it?_

_We did it!_

_Stay cautious._

_Don't let your guard down._

They proceed forward, still in perfect synchronicity of movement. Weaving effortlessly around one another along the access ports that have opened up along the outer perimeter of the plane. 801S find it first, and the port beneath him opens a new sloping path extending downward. At the bottom, they find a static ( _dormant_ ) executable in the shape of the spinning multi-dimensional YoRHa symbol used in certain interfaces. An activation condition extends in a white line from its tip into the blank sky.

Like a fuse, 9S thinks.

_Together?_

9S hesitates without knowing why. It doesn't feel real.

A scan of the protocol and all its components drifts soothingly through his mind as 801S seeks to reassure him. But that is not what he means. The realness of the program and even of their victory is not in question. It is everything that will come after this that does not feel real.

801S drifts to his side. They cannot touch, but his presence bleeds across the filament that connects them, steady and grounding. He prompts again.

_Together?_

This time 9S accepts.

_Together._

The final protocol goes quietly. In a burst of red and black particles that fade to less than dust. The activation condition dissolves with it, fraying away into the empty, endless sky of the lunar server's network. Though they are still connected, 9S knows he is the one thinking in abstractions of curses finally being lifted and terrible things being undone.

801S paints a far simpler picture between them, of a puppet cutting away its strings and watching them burn to ash.


	19. E[Q]uipoise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 390.2 - 395: Making the getaway, encountering the real deal, and balancing interests.

Before Sorting Yard B, V spent most of his time replaying Fern's use of Humility. Occasionally, she would give up glaring at Scheherazade to flick a glance his way, eyes wide with a craving for answers that reflected his own. But where his desire was cut with growing displeasure, hers was tempered by certainty that he knew exactly what had happened to her, as well as a touch of anxiety that it might be something unpleasant.

She was correct on both assumptions, though not the way she probably thought. He did know, and it was unpleasant. Just not in any way that affected her.

What Fern had done did not have roots in Nelo Angelo. Function followed form. Demonic knighthood was still knighthood, and to move as such was built into the imprisoning armor regardless of the nature of the paired weapon or the one trapped within. Fern's actions were also not related to the Yamato. It was a thing of precision. It would never have lent its full potential to that kind of thoughtless chaos. Vergil himself did not thrive in thoughtless chaos.

However, he did survive through it.

Perhaps that made it natural that what Fern had unleashed was an echo from that timeless, featureless blur that began with his release from the armor and ended with Nero's freshly detached arm in his hand. Weaponless and weakened was no state to wander the underworld in. Not without a death wish, and at no time had he burned more brightly with the desire to live (or fear of death, ever unadmitted). So Vergil formed a weapon. A ghost in the trustworthy shape of his father's old sword, made from his own demonic energy. Some of the things he did with it were sophisticated, but many were mere brute force answers to his situation. Products of necessity rather than training. To see 'Humility _'_ bestow that echo of his essence to someone, as though it wasn't emblematic of the very reasons he'd had to create the Mirage Edge in the first place—

"You are bleeding," said Scheherazade.

Theta and Fern both snapped to attention, their eyes hunting over him until they found the few drops of blood running down the cane where the ridges had bitten into his fingers. He swapped it to his left hand and flexed his right. Fern watched him a little longer, but it didn't take more than a few seconds for her to be satisfied that he was fine. Or at least to conclude that if he wasn't, she wasn't going to get him to talk about it right then.

She settled back into her seat and sighed. "Eyes front, Theta."

"…If you're sure."

Masamune's work to unlock the sword's records had to have something to do with this; V just didn't understand why or how it would manifest in such a way. To linger on that detail was to once more wonder how the sword came to have any android-compatible information on it at all. It wasn't made of memory alloy, nor did it have any of the built-in storage properties that YoRHa weaponry was capable of, never mind that he had not been present enough to pen any poetry while he was Nelo Angelo. The android relationship with weaponry was not wholly incomparable to devil arms. Perhaps it wasn't so far-fetched to assume they 'read' weapons according to the same principle of spiritual residue that had allowed V to speak to the dragon and Zero.

And to the gods.

A chill prickled over his shoulders. 49 had energetically gone back and forth with him on the magical vs. the technological any time V was in the mood for the discussion, but it was never more than academic interest for him. The scanner had been deaf to the peal of the bells, immune to the sickly pressure of the church, and completely insensitive to magic that didn't cause a physical change in the world around him. They would never know if Fern was just as insensitive when it came to the presence of the gods, but she was sensitive to every other instance of magic they'd come across. Including whatever leftover resonance could be found in 'Humility'.

Sorting Yard B provided a welcome distraction.

A flash from the blood-red distance had prompted Theta to slam on the brakes, sending him and Fern hurtling toward the front of the train. Even Scheherazade had slipped sideways in the barren seats and looked to Theta with a perplexed frown.

Theta remained fixated on the horizon. "There's something out there."

"CONFIRMED," Pod announced. "LARGE CLUSTER OF ANDROID SIGNALS IDENTIFIED 2KM AHEAD."

Fern pulled herself upright and squinted through the windshield. "Can't see much, but I think we've got a welcome party sitting up on the tracks."

The night lit up off to one side of them, the accompanying boom close enough to rock the train car nearly off its rails. Eyes dazzled and ears ringing, V tilted his head back out of the window. Fading heat and the stink of scorched metal blew over him from the dented siding. "More than just sitting."

"Yard B is Army-controlled," Theta said. "Most likely they think we're Resistance."

"And their answer to that is artillery." Fern shook her head but staved off further disgust in favor of proactivity. "Pod, you got anything that can take an out anti-tank rifle?"

"AFFIRMATIVE. HOWEVER, CURRENT VELOCITY, PROXIMITY TO TARGETS, AND RANGE OF VIABLE PROGRAMS ARE NON-COMPATIBLE."

"What about that _thing_ ," Theta asked, half-turning toward V. "The one you used to destroy the launch facility."

"On a moving train…" V considered, with more enjoyment than he probably should have. "It can be done."

"Don't," Scheherazade warned.

They faltered again, this time toward the back of the car as Theta heaved the lever forward and the train lurched in response. Another shell boomed behind them with a screech and crackle of destroyed track. The attacks were becoming more accurate.

"Do you have a counter-proposal?!"

"Maintain speed."

She walked calmly toward the front of the train until she was beside Theta. From beneath her cloak, she produced a weapon. It looked carved from turquoise rather than forged, the double blades seemingly captured as waves or feathers arcing toward one another to make a spade shape.

With her hand pressed to the side of the blade, Scheherazade produced a sound. Not words. Not singing or bells; a Sound. One that V's body unconsciously jerked back from.

A circle appeared on the other side of the window, ethereal as a pane of colored glass and etched in letters that matched a memory that wasn't his, of black and white rings clashing in a gray world. Their glow intensified from dull violet all the way to a white-hot orange that made it hard to see beyond the front of the train. Beside him, Fern squinted. Turned her head away and listed toward the nearest wall with the same tight, subtly pulled back look she got when…

V stared at the barrier. He'd assumed it was like one of Pod's programs, but it was not.

It was magic.

"Brace."

The words might as well have been the whisper of a butterfly taking flight before an earthquake. Scheherazade's barrier made a battering ram of the train, sparing them from the impact but not from the ensuing eruption of destroyed munitions or the shriek as concrete barriers sparked and ground on the tracks until they fell apart.

The reprieve didn't last long. The shock wore off and pursuit came in the form of planes. A pair of them, pocking the train's already tattered frame, the tracks, the dirt with their fire.

Fern yanked Theta off her chair and flattened them both against the wall as a bullet struck the control panel. "Pod! Load R010, 75% power!"

"REQUEST CONFIRMED."

While Pod 042 was still splitting and arranging his parts into the correct position, Fern grabbed him, leaned out the nearest window, aimed, and yelled. "Fire!"

The beam split the twilight. A boom sounded over the wind, faint compared to the crash of the plane rapidly falling behind them. More fire from the second plane answered but did not enter the car. Scheherazade had managed to set up a new barrier over the roof. It gave Fern more than enough time to order a second shot and rid them of their second pursuer.

V raised a brow as Pod floated back to his side. "You take requests now?"

"IN A LIMITED CAPACITY," 042 answered with something like polite amusement. "THE SITUATION REQUIRES FLEXIBILITY FOR THE EFFICIENT DISPOSAL OF THREATS."

Theta went back to the control panel, examining the damage with a faint, disgusted huff. "There's only so efficient a single pod can get. We should consider abandoning the train."

"Have we taken that much damage?" asked V.

"No," she said patiently. "However, because we kept you off the radar past the mainland and have now proven we have the ability to destroy multiple gunships and casually bypass both artillery and physical barriers, there is a growing possibility that a bomber may be employed to eradicate us from a safe altitude before we even know we're being targeted."

"Increase speed." Every head in the cabin went to Scheherazade. She was already moving in her glacially steady way toward the back end of the train. "Let the train distract while we go on."

"Jumping was a lot more enjoyable the last time I did it," Fern grumbled, flicking her arm out in a 'hurry up' motion. "Come on, Theta; you're with me. Scheherazade—"

Fern was talking to no one. Scheherazade had jumped as soon as she reached the door.

"What the hell is _wrong_ with her?"

"Her actions bother you?" The corners of Theta's mouth tilted with subtle satisfaction. "I haven't found it that different from dealing with you two."

"Watch it, or you can figure out how to get off this runaway dump truck yourself."

Scheherazade was already waiting for them at the bottom of the hill when they landed. Not a scratch or a scuff or any sign of damage despite having no means to slow her descent. V couldn't say he was surprised. That much could be expected from an android that had seemingly walked to the mainland and whose escape plan was to walk her way back out with him in tow.

They hadn't lost much time. The industrial sector cropped up around them within an hour and proceeding through was largely uneventful. Android density was lower, though that relative solitude was not without cause. It wasn't like the truly abandoned factories V had seen over the summer. The tangles of metal and pipes belched steam and reeked of smoke and chemicals he couldn't name. It wasn't supposed to be that way, but most of the maintenance teams had fled. Terrified of being caught in the fireball if the Army opened fire on the area, or so Fern guessed.

"They wouldn't," Theta had assured. "It would cost too much to replace the infrastructure."

They made haste anyway. Not a simple trip, or one that took a single day (and Scheherazade seemed startled by the reality that V required sleep), but an enlightening one.

Scheherazade moved like he used to. Like Vergil.

If anything got in her way, she cut it down with the kind of efficiency that suggested reflex rather than conscious effort. The only change he'd seen come over her face yet were slight variances in the position of her eyebrows as she worked out some problem or another. Resistance, Army, they were all the same to her. Bodies that were or weren't in her way. And he could tell she was holding back. She could break anyone in her way like toys if she felt so compelled. The only thing holding her back at all was that she seemed just as susceptible to being shot as any other android.

The further north they went, the less of a concern that became. By the time they reached the modest bridge to the Isle of Skye, there was no evidence that anything was wrong at all. The northern edge of Sector H was isolated wilderness where the only sounds were waves and wind and the bleating of unbothered sheep.

Towering panels collected, magnified, and reproduced the twilight to provide false, middling daylight. Not enough for any trees, but enough for more persistent varieties of flower, modest shrubs, and abundant bursts of hardy grass which fed the only sheep V had seen during the entire span of his time in this world.

The Isle's meager android population were all shepherds. A nominal title at best; there were no predators on the island, so they focused on maintaining the technology and left the sheep to their own devices. As Theta told it, cotton, flax, and other fiber-producing plants were difficult to cultivate in this area of the world. Androids needed clothes and the sheep were already present when androids took the Horizon Band, so they took steps to help the extant fauna to thrive mostly undisturbed.

More importantly, they also left Fern and V undisturbed. The island androids were so remote they had no idea who V was or what was happening further south. They had that mild but busy look about them that he recognized from rural humans. Agricultural activities as well as the subsequent textile endeavors branched out from the Legacy Reclamation, and Theta's presence likely represented the most exciting thing that had happened to them since the end of the war.

V didn't envy their blissful ignorance, but he was grateful for it. He had more than enough on his mind.

The isolation and room to relax might as well have been a return to idle peace, but ultimately, the Isle of Skye was only a pleasant stop before the colder, more aggressively isolated secondary island. Scheherazade provided a token explanation that only night kingdom personnel were on-site and that all V had to do was sit still and no one would bother him. Then she disappeared to prepare for the next leg of the trip. To the west shore and the looming shadow of the ship that would carry them to their next stop.

Her plan suited him fine. A shame he wasn't left to his own devices for more than a few moments before impediments appeared. The first of which was a throaty growl filled with more malice than he thought could be contained in a single spoken syllable.

**" _Tau."_**

"YoRHa Unit 8E," she replied, as lazily lighthearted as the last time they'd crossed paths. "Congratulations on your survival. It's quite infrequent that anyone bounces back from an encounter with me as well as you have."

"Funny, I could usually say the same thing. I'm almost a little embarrassed about it, but you didn't give me much of a chance to do what I'm good at." Fern's go-to fists materialized around her hands. "I say we fix that and find out just how durable you are."

"Unit 8E, calm—"

The blade on Fern's bracers stopped short of Rho's nose with enough force to ruffle the stray hairs over her face. "Don't finish that sentence. Not unless you want to come back as Rho- **3**."

Theta put herself personally between her subordinates and Fern. The commander couldn't best the executioner in combat, but no one watching would've known that by the deliberate way she pushed the blade aside with just the backs of two fingers.

"I need to debrief with my team," she said coolly. "Mind your mission."

"Tau almost _cost_ me my mission."

"Yes. That was her job. The situation has changed, and you are no longer her concern. She did what she was made to do. Stop taking it personally."

"Take your own goddamn advice. I'm doing what _I_ was made to do."

V observed their clash of frigidity and fire with distant interest. Fern took many things personally. Her own existence most of all, and she wore that part of herself on her sleeve with little attempt at a façade of any kind—cheerful or otherwise. Theta should have been aware of it. After all, she too had been courted to fulfill Fern's desire for self-destruction. It was odd to him that she should fail to understand by now that 'don't take it personally' was an impossible request for Fern to fulfill when it came to being denied the kind of death she was hoping for.

"Let them go," he called, hooking Fern back before could do anything that might startle to local presence. "Once Scheherazade is back, we can go our separate ways anyway. There's no point causing a scene now."

Fern and Theta both jumped, surprise written all over their faces. It had been a long day, a long trip, and nearly three _very_ long weeks since the launch facility. Clearly, neither of them had digested that Theta's presence was no longer a requirement. Now that they were out of danger and in Scheherazade's care, there was no reason she should come with them any further.

If he didn't know any better, he might've thought neither of them seemed particularly pleased about the prospect as Theta took her team and stalked away. The moment they were well enough out of earshot, Fern eyed him.

"You know this is a trap right."

"Most likely. But we want to go to the Night Kingdom and Scheherazade wishes to take us. A trap door that takes you where you wish is merely a door."

"Yeah except the part where you fall and arrive at your destination with broken legs."

"Having doubts?" V asked.

"Having _concerns_. Like a normal person who thinks ahead once in a while. We're…admittedly pretty good at making it up as we go, but we've only had to do that in nice, cozy environments where you could sleep in the first half-stable pile of rocks we came across without freezing to death and food was easy to find."

"Worrying about it before we get there will only tire us both out." He brushed a hand back through his hair. "And I for one am ready to sit on a boat and sleep and worry about the rest later."

"Not surprising. It's been pretty non-stop since the moment we left the stacks." She rested a hand on her chin, grimacing at whatever processes were churning behind her eyes. "Not that I won't do my best, but I'd really like it if we had a backup plan already prepared. I don't want to end up caught off guard again."

A gentle ping interrupted that thought. "ALERT: E-MAIL NOTIFICATION RECEIVED FROM ACCESS POINT."

"…Come again?"

"You got a message," Fern clarified. "One somebody didn't want to be trackable. There must be a compatible relay around here somewhere."

"AFFIRMATIVE. DISPLAYING ON UNIT FERN'S MAP."

"Thanks. This way, V."

She led them to a brusquely built structure that reminded V somewhat of the imitation buildings made by machines back in the city. This one wasn't missing details, it was just designed to be as severe, and purpose-oriented as possible. It was impressive in a way. He'd never expected a building to be capable of replicating the stony, disquieting presence of a disappointed father.

The access point was meant to be just as austere, but familiarity took away some of the effect. What had been disguised as vending machines back east had taken the appearance of an old phone booth in the west. It could have been any of the ones he'd ever called Nico from, albeit this one was squat, black, and the panels were of heavily clouded glass to hide that there was no actual phone inside.

Pod displayed three messages total and began with the oldest.

" _54.6976° N, 94.3120° W._ _Possible rest/re-supply in NK. Frequent delivery site."_

17 days ago. The same day as the launch, and the sender was Pod 153.

"Where is that?" asked Fern.

"UNKNOWN LOCATION ON NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT."

"Hm. What about the next message?"

_"42.5043° N, 90.2408° W. 'Roswell'. Possible location of dragon per old-world rumor. Good luck."_

Less than 3 days ago. From Pod 153, but that well wish definitely came from 49. So, he was well. No mention of Shadow, but he wrote as if he didn't have time to spare on details.

Well. However she was doing, there was no way for V to anything about it. "Do you have any information on Roswell?"

"OLD WORLD CITY KNOWN FOR FAMOUS UFO SIGHTING. FURTHER DATA UNKNOWN."

That sounded like precisely the kind of thing androids would misinterpret the importance of, but if the rumor came from the old world, perhaps that lent it a little more credence. Not much, but leads were not in good enough supply for him to turn his nose up.

"And the last one?"

_"The destruction of the machine network was a great victory for us all. But that does not mean that the machine threat is gone. Do not be led astray from your mission by false peace. Remember the humans driven away from their homes. Remember the pain you have endured for so many thousands of years. Remain unified in your single purpose. Glory… to mankind."_

19 hours ago. From... the Council of Humanity?

Fern clutched her arms tight as if blocking out a chill. "Would've been happy to never hear one of those ever again."

"These messages were common?"

"Once a month. Sometimes twice if some especially crazy shit happened." She laughed in a short, bitter bark. "Guess we know why now."

"Did they always end that way?"

"Sure did." She straightened up, performing a salute that crossed her left hand over her chest. "YoRHa's operational mantra. _Glory to mankind_."

Small wonder the previous Fern's default treatment of him had been so fanatical. Or that the present Fern couldn't seem to rid herself of the old one's more reverential habits no matter how hard she tried to mimic Griffon's crass approach to their working relationship. She was excellent at being whoever she needed to be at a given moment, for however long it took to gain a modicum of favor. Except when it came to him. Try as she might, she seemed bound by some innate set of rules that had nothing to do with who or what V actually was.

Glory to mankind. Or whatever could pass for it.

"Think he's having any luck up there?"

He followed her gaze to the twinkle of a few bright evening stars puncturing the pale blue and deep violet sky. "Pod 042 hasn't attempted to kill you, so there must be some progress. Though I doubt he'd find you easy prey. For one who seeks death, you hang on admirably… albeit you require a little coaxing."

"I am a soldier," she pointed out, failing to either scoff or sound sarcastic enough to hide that the meager praise was not wholly ineffective. "It's easy to persist if I have something to fight for."

V looked back out toward the southern horizon. "A common sentiment even outside of YoRHa, it seems."

"You know how we are, V. Are you really mad at them?"

"No. If anything I admire just how many of them refused to believe blindly."

"Do you have to do that?" He shot her an inquisitive look. "That thing where you casually ignore that believing or not believing come from the same place. Acting like it's objectively better when you aren't seen as human."

"Isn't it? Godhood doesn't interest me and believing I'm human invites one more half-truth onto the very lies that built you. It seems mutually beneficial that androids do not believe."

She shook her head. "You really don't get it. We see what we need to see."

"It's 'we see what we want to see'."

"No. That's only for a human."

His mouth tugged. Her finality gave him pause and pause cleared his thoughts just enough for a small spark of clarity. There was no tangible difference between the two versions of the phrase, but it was clear she said what she meant, and she meant something that was getting lost in translation.

"Trying to impress on me my lack of understanding about the nature of androids again?"

"I guess I am."

"Well?"

She frowned, her brows knitting as her eyes dropped. "Forget it. Just... Remember that none of us asked to be made like this."

"And I did?"

She peered at him. Half remorseful, because the answer was no, of course, he hadn't, no one made or born anywhere had ever asked to exist; and half righteously and rightly accusatory because the other answer was **yes**.

Vergil hadn't asked to be born. V's case was more complicated. He existed because Vergil had forgotten he was only a boy who had been calling out with every part of his being except his voice to be saved when the Yamato answered. Because of his own delusion that protecting himself by his own hand was what had happened there. He brought himself into creation and he was _everything_ Vergil believed he would be—it was just that those parts turned out to be far more as well.

He took a deep breath. Squeezed his cane. Released both. "Humility."

"Humility," Fern echoed, in a tacit agreement to leave the previous topic behind. "What the hell did it do to me?"

"You tell me."

"Well, I…" She hesitated and looked down at her hands. "I was... completing the standard output increasing NFCS protocol for primary weaponry. It doesn't really involve the weapon, it's all internal, like overclocking. It just executes differently based on the weapon's classification. Only when I got to the release stage, something happened? I don't remember all that well, just blue light and a sort of… burning sensation. Not like fire, more like acid? It went dark after that. I woke up on the ground."

"I see."

"…You have more to say than that, I hope."

"Not especially. I don't believe it's dangerous to you."

"Good to know, but what _happened_?"

"You used my magic. Whatever remains of it are stored in that sword. Your control of it was quite good if anything." He smiled. "Last time I caused it to react, I burned the park down."

"Oh." She looked embarrassed. Like she didn't quite know what to do with herself all of the sudden. "Right. Your magic. Okay _._ "

He wasn't sure he liked the way she was responding. She didn't seem to like it either, and so hastily pointed out that Theta was coming he initially mistook it for an incredibly transparent ruse. But it was true, and Fern welcomed the intrusion with the kind of relief that she usually only displayed when she reached the end of a conversation with Hibiscus.

"Something important to share?" she asked.

The manic tone earned a suspicious squint from Theta, but little more. She folded her hands slowly behind her back, her posture rigidly formal. "I will preface this with an acknowledgment that what I am about to say has no bearing on Scheherazade's plans for you, or your own intentions, and a request that you entertain me anyway."

Fern and V shared a look, but they both relaxed and let Theta talk.

"It has come to my attention that Satellite Гримизна was part of the 244th descent operation. Obviously, I did not give that order or provide any clearance for it from groundside. So, my satellite was mobilized on an order from above me. I cannot recall my troops. I can't do anything about the situation here that would not be read as insubordination. So, I would like to do the one thing I am capable of in the meantime and remain in attendance with V."

"How cute." Fern grinned from ear to ear. "And let me guess. It conveniently makes sure you don't lose track of me, too?"

"I'm unsure if you're goading me or if you really are that mistaken. You know my goa. It has never once changed. I am, first, foremost, and _forever,_ in pursuit of the preservation of android kind. There were perhaps fifty-thousand living ground units at the end of the war. Five percent and counting went offline for reasons related to loss of purpose after Jackass publicized the machine research reports. I have no doubt we will lose 2-5% more before the 244th descent is over. Our population is not substantial enough to stand being decimated like this in a time of technical peace."

"So you want to stop the in-fighting."

"I do. You and even Unit 9S are a minor concern compared to this. Regardless of whether your data is viable in securing our future, the present must be secured first. To do anything else would be a pointless exercise."

That certainly explained why she took every opportunity to be displeased with V personally for the state of Sector H. He cocked his head. "What do you hope to accomplish in coming with us?"

"A chance to speak with whoever your benefactor is. If Hamelin answers to them, they may have the necessary authority to mandate a cease-fire. And if they don't, I have you."

"Oh?" V grinned wide, all teeth. "Do you?"

"As far as anyone else is concerned, yes. Rho will go back and make the report that I allowed myself to be kidnapped in order to not lose track of the human's trail into the Night Kingdom. Loyalty has its perks, but so does a well-placed half-truth." She smiled back at him, toothless but far from docile. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"I might." He crossed his arms and drummed idly at his sleeve. "You owe us certain information, do you not? Who is Scheherazade?"

"I told you she's the prototype for—"

He waved his cane. "No. Before that. What data does she contain that makes her so special even to you?"

"She wasn't built to contain any data. She's the real thing. I thought you might understand on your own since you were so specific in your lie as to mention Jerusalem. She was the one who led the final crusade and killed the Red-Eye the last time it surfaced, finally cleansing this world of maso."

V had been hoping for information about the dragon, but that was interesting in its own right. "She's the _celebrant_?"

Theta laughed. "Maso was a global problem, there wasn't just one. Celebrants were only a type of android. A job assignment, like an overseer, commander, battler, enforcer, et cetera. But I suppose Scheherazade would be the most famous one."

"Never came across the name, and accounts of celebrant androids weren't terribly detailed."

She shook her head, more at herself than them. "I assume you have no idea why a new Red-Eye suddenly appeared to begin with, then."

"REPORT: THE DETAILS OF THE FINAL RED EYE'S RE-EMERGENCE AND SUBSEQUENT DESTRUCTION WERE NOT AVAILABLE FROM ARCHIVES OR SURVEYS COMPLETED BY UNIT 9S. IT IS ONLY KNOWN THAT IT OCCURRED IN JERUSALEM AND THAT WHITE-CHLORINATION CAUSING MASO COMPLETED FULL EXPULSION AT THAT TIME."

"I don't know if I should be impressed or embarrassed that you managed to lie so well with so little information…" She stared at the dark sea. "Jerusalem is the place where the original Red-Eye was killed by the human whose data I house as part of my model. It's a forbidden place. Or it was, once. It's not clear what state it's in currently, but machines made a nest of it during the war and it was considered an acceptable loss. Somehow the local replicants got it in their minds that there was something in the city that could grant wishes. So one went in, with another that had died. It's unclear just what happened, but I understand the dead replicant was...resurrected somehow. As the new Red Eye."

"And Scheherazade was dispatched to deal with it."

"No. Scheherazade was no one at the time. A celebrant model that happened to be nearby, nothing more. But she organized a team, destroyed Red-Eye, then the remaining Legion, and completed the final ritual. She was quite the hero for the time."

"Wait…" Fern mumbled, her face pinching. "Wait, that would mean she pre-dates the war." Theta nodded. "No way. Modern androids aren't even designed to exist that long, how is that possible?"

"That's… above my clearance."

V raised a brow. That was a very different kind of answer than 'that's classified'. "Who does she answer to?"

"I don't know. Scheherazade is a dead legend in the day kingdom, a ghost in the kingdom of night, and a memory up in orbit. I'm not privy to what she does or how only that she has been doing it a very long time. I can tell you that she served an important role in the formation of HHRMO and the post-Gestalt salvage of mankind's artifacts, but I have no idea what she's been doing since the war began."

"A magic-using android wishes to take me to a land of eternal night where true dragons vanished and false ones were born and a mysterious benefactor awaits…" He spun his cane and planted it in the hard, stony dirt. "Shall we go?"

Both of them were caught off guard. "Go where?"

"To get the only other answer that matters."

Scheherazade had felt strange from the moment they made contact. She didn't match up with anything else he'd experienced. Not Emil, or the dragon, or the gods. Something of Zero, possibly, but even that was not quite accurate.

They found her on the ship, confirming a set of coordinates on a bright screen. A map suggested it matched with the southern tip of a large island far to the west of them. The Greenland outpost, just as she claimed.

"It is not time," she said, without identifiable reproach.

There were multiple forces at work within Scheherazade. Part of it the axe and part of it whatever else she was hiding or holding back. If he could compare it to anything, it was akin to the sensation that always came over him in the presence of divinity statues—a connection was far less comforting than he wanted it to be now that he understood what her original purpose was.

"Scheherazade." She tilted her head. Always, at the very least, she answered his call, if not necessarily his questions. "Who is at the place you are taking me to?"

She considered him a moment in silence and turned away with a curt signal that they should leave.

V swapped his cane to his right arm and stabbed it down through her cloak and into the metal floor, pinning her in place. She jerked, caught by surprise at the sudden tug, and a strange wind kicked up, eliciting a quiet hiss from Fern. It settled as quickly as it had come. Scheherazade hadn't whirled and tried to put him through the floor, so for now that could go unremarked on. It was less important than making sure she didn't have the opportunity to ignore him.

" **Who** ," he repeated slowly. "Are you delivering me to?"

She took hold of his cane and very gently lifted it and V's full force behind it, just the fraction necessary to extract her cloak. "…Briar Rose. It would like to meet you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will be bi-weekly this month while I wrangle some personal project deadlines.   
> Next one is on the 17th~


	20. The World Beyond the Cradle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 400: Going home again.

"801S?" called 9S. "Hellooo—?"

"He's not in here," 10H yelled back from inside the diagnostics bed. "Said he had something to do!"

"Of course he did…"

9S turned to leave, thought better of it, and strolled up to the side of the cot. As soon as 801S had confirmed that the final protocol and any associated triggers were completely erased, 10H became his priority. They'd marched out of the lunar server as soon as they were able. It would've been a lot easier to transfer her to a new body, and 10H hinted plenty of times that she would have preferred it that way, but 801S insisted on fixing her the hard way.

The factory was an immediate solution, not a long-term or infinite one. Parts were limited and none of them, as he'd soberly reminded them, could afford to throw away their bodies from now on.

"You're looking a lot better. You back to 100%?"

"It feels like it, but we won't know for sure until the full body scan is done." She stretched. He was pretty sure she wasn't supposed to do that in a diagnostic bed, but he wasn't about to tell an H-type how to behave with a repair device. "It's taking forever though."

"Nothing I can do about that, unfortunately. I'm gonna keep looking for 801S. Are you… coming to Earth too?"

"Of course! Where else am I supposed to go? Back to the moon server?" Her lips flattened and curled. "If I never see that place again I'll die happy."

9S glanced up at Pod 006 units hovering in silence at terminals and beside heavy but sleek machinery in the sterile, harshly lit room. There was no point in asking how the two of them were doing. Pod 006 was useful and for now, 10H was willing to deal with it on a co-custodian basis, even though she'd essentially quit the job already. If there was going to be reconciliation, it would have to come in its own time and he wasn't about to butt in and offer unsolicited advice to either of them.

He had never listened to any when he was in 10H's position.

On the more positive side, Pod 006's response to their bad standing was an insistence on being helpful. A hundred of the red units had accompanied them away from the moon server, and once inside the factory had made it their business to map the whole thing, unlock most of the dormant systems, assist in the restoration of full production power, and perform the necessary maintenance checks after a more than a year of disuse. It just couldn't make as much progress with 10H.

Part of it was Pod 006's personality. It had too much exposure to human records and no conversational exposure at all to anyone that wasn't itself or 10H, leaving it with a papery, cheap jauntiness to its syntax. The impression 9S got was that it genuinely wanted to be well-mannered, cheery, and comforting but it didn't really get how to pull that off without sounding fake. He didn't think it was lying when it said it was relieved that it didn't have to hurt 10H anymore. However, that didn't mean it understood that the 'water under the bridge' approach was more insulting than effective.

The main control terminal was empty. If 801S wasn't there and wasn't with 10H, there was only one other place to check.

9S rode a series of loading elevators up toward the top of the facility, where vents blowing brisk but above-freezing air kept frost from creeping over important fixtures. There were only two things up there: The exhaust outlets that piped fumes into the frigid crater above where the temperature ensured no smoke or vapor would rise and core storage. A frigid column of a room lined by the subtle, strobing glow of inert black boxes. Each sat alone in a sturdy transparent compartment, already nestled into the gyroscopic installation structures that would keep them safely suspended inside a YoRHa's body.

"Hey, Nines." 801S spun where he sat in the middle of the floor, his smile wide as he flapped a hand for 9S to come closer. "You're right on time, come look what I've been working on."

9S joined him, only to jump back from the glow in 801S' lap. "Is that an intact machine core?!"

"Sure is," 801S said, his chest puffing as he held it up between them.

"Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? They lost a whole orbital base messing with those things!"

"I saw as much among your intel files. I didn't tamper with the sealing component of the core itself. I was actually testing whether or not we could operate without a self-destruct protocol, but it's built into the black box itself, so I ended up unsealing it."

9S wondered if that was how he sounded to other androids when he casually accomplished things that were sort of a big deal. He'd seen fully intact machine cores before, but only inside certain goliaths, like spinning and drilling types where they were always exposed—and that singing machine in the amusement park too. The core in 801S' hand was small by comparison. Not much bigger than the broken ones the reset Pascal had tried to sell him.

"So did it work?"

"Unfortunately, no. The black box also facilitates communication between the core's framework and our more standard AI components." He turned it over, peering into the golden glow emanating from the center like there was a secret inside if he looked hard enough. "I'd like to run some experiments, but now isn't really the time."

"Well, you tried at least."

"I did. And I succeeded in other areas on the way. When I was messing around in the main terminal I managed to find our design documents and remove the base imperative."

9S knew what those words meant, but his mind stuttered in the effort to process what 801S was saying. "The…base imperative?"

"Yeah. No point in us longing for humans at this stage, you know?"

"801S that's… Are you sure that was the right thing to do? Isn't messing with something like that kind of like playing god?"

801S searched 9S' face, his own scrunched as though 9S had said something puzzling. "What are you talking about? It's R&D. How's it any different from you unlocking your combat protocols?"

"I only did that for me. This is like if I went into the system and decided every scanner should operate like that."

"If it helped them survive, wouldn't you?"

9S frowned, averting his eyes to the surrounding walls and all the waiting black boxes. "I guess… I don't know, this just feels different. Like we're not qualified to make this decision."

801S rubbed at his neck and gave an apologetic laugh. "I get that. I promise I do. But there's really nobody who _is_ qualified, Nines. _Maybe_ Jackass, but I got the impression she's not the kind of person we should trust with our design documents."

"You don't know the half of it," 9S sighed.

It wasn't that he didn't trust 801S. He did. More than anyone. Because what 801S cared for most were the YoRHa units themselves. Living up on the Bunker for a year, as a scanner who was also a healer, he'd watched them all die and live and die again. He'd been forgotten over and over by people who treated him like a friend and he was either too young or naïve or just too oddly assembled to accept that. Whether it was because H-types had that instinct to preserve others, or the special resentment he harbored at being a pointless prototype for an unknown improvement that was never meant to make a real difference, he was more driven than anyone to personally ensure everybody they salvaged from the Ark was restored to an existence where futility was not built-in.

But still…

"If it helps," 801S offered. "I don't have the base imperative either."

"You took it out?"

"I was made without it." He shrugged and climbed to his feet. "Maybe since there were already YoRHa on the Bunker who were putting other things before humanity they wanted to observe my behavior. Doesn't matter why at this point. The point is we know I'm functioning fine, and it shouldn't have any side effects. I saw how much you struggled when you first met V. I thought it might be better if everyone didn't have to deal with that."

That was easy to understand. It was a miserable experience and he'd thought plenty of times that he'd have liked to rip out that annoying part of him. Still, now that it was possible, it felt like it was wrong to remove it. Like it was something that shouldn't be let go of.

Something important.

Something integral.

_…What the hell am I thinking?!_

9S' pressed his fingertips into his eyes. It had been a long time since he'd had a thought that wasn't his slink into his routines like that. Every objection he had, he banished on the spot. Some of them might have been his own genuine concerns about whether it was okay for a YoRHa to change themselves like that, but it was not worth the effort to separate one kind of thought from the other.

There were no humans left to long for. If they could live without it, let that redundant code **die**.

"Hey!" 9S jumped, his focus returning outside himself to find Shadow leaking up from the floor, her amorphous body closing around 801S' hand and the machine core in it.

"Shadow, no!" He sank his hands into her with no regard for what he was grabbing. While she was formless, it didn't really matter. "That's not food! You'll get sick or something! Spit it out!"

Shadow paused, her eyeless form considering him before she obeyed with a sulky huff and retreated back into 9S' shadow. All that was left in her wake was the core and 801S' glove, drenched in thick saliva.

"Ugh, gross…" He peeled it off gingerly and tossed the other glove while he was at it, leaving the machine core nestled wetly atop both. "Guess that can stay here and…dry off. Come on. I gotta check on 10H, but I think we're ready to go after that. Pod?"

An 006 unit popped up readily. Getting up there was a matter of waiting on the lifts, but pods made getting back down to the lower areas easy. For never having used one, 801S took to the experience of carelessly hopping from heights with a pod in hand as quick as anything else. Overall, he wasn't quite so intense anymore. Still focused, but there was a twinkle in his eye and he seemed to be having fun now that their lives were no longer actively in danger.

The challenges that might crop up between the concept and reality of bringing others back still nibbled at 9S, but 801S' confidence was contagious. Hopes he'd carried since the day he left the city sprouted and stretched tall toward a growing light inside of him.

"Looks good," 801S said warmly, meticulously scanning down the diagnostic read-outs displayed over 10H's head. "You're back in fully operational order."

She swung her legs energetically up and out over the edge of the bed. "Finally! Did you guys finish your prep? I want off this rock!"

801S blinked. "You do?"

10H glanced at 9S. "Did you not tell him?"

"I thought you two had already discussed it during your repairs!"

"I didn't repair her with the intention to put her to work."

9S rubbed at his forehead. That sounded like 801S alright. "Ok, so neither of you ever talked about this. 801S, she wants to go to Earth."

"And help!"

"And help. She is an H unit, it'll speed things up."

"I see... Well, not like I have any authority to tell you no. Let's head to the distribution terminal together then. We can catch you up on the way."

The factory's dissemination system had limits. Building bodies was a fully automated process that could be started or stopped with a button so long as the required materials were available. Transporting those bodies was where it got complicated. It was only supposed to do that when queried, and 'query' had a very narrow definition: A request for the release of pre-built backup bodies to the Bunker, or a release of raw materials to a terminal to facilitate transporter activity.

Enter 9S on 19 September 11945. His stubborn hacking had reached a lot farther into the sourcing systems than he understood at the time. The factory had plenty of rules and protocols, but it was also designed to be able to solve problems dynamically to avoid the need for anyone to ever come directly to the site. He'd effectively overwritten the coordinates it released back-up bodies to, so the distribution system read that one transporter in the ruins as updated Bunker coordinates. The result was the transport of a pre-built backup body _as_ material for an already-active unit.

The snag was that 9S could only request a body for himself, as he'd later found out.

"Here." 801S sat on a pile of spare transport boxes in from of the terminal and tossed 9S three small translucent white cases with male connectors attached. Inside he could just make out a raw component of some kind.

"What's this?"

"An ID circuit," 10H murmured, feeling at the back of her neck for the corresponding port. "With a data bus hooked up. That makes sense. An internal partition wouldn't work for this since ID scans occur at the hardware level. And if we overwrote our own IDs, we'd risk the in-house system updating the ID log with incorrect information. Or locking up in response to the mismatch."

"Exactly. With that, you have an unassociated, freely overwritable secondary circuit. You should be able to make the transporter request whoever you need by just doing the same process as before."

"Why three?" 9S asked, feeling a little out of his depth with them swapping to H-type talk. "Isn't the point that 10H would use this?"

"We know for certain scanners can contact the ark. It's unclear whether H-types will be able to. Their access range is different, so she may not respond to the non-standard interface method. You may need to assist." He crossed his arms, bouncing one heel idly against the crate. "I was going to go down with you and ask Pod 006 to stay on this side as our operator while I handled it since I know I can do anything this process might require, but it's better this way. I'm the one who spent the most time getting to know this facility. I belong up here in case anything goes wrong."

"Doesn't that mean…" 9S hesitated. "Won't that make it a lot longer until you see 3S?"

"I'll see him when my work is done," 801S said with easy warmth. Like it was the most obvious thing. His fingers brushed across the star-studded visor wrapped around the bottom of his braid. "There'll be all the time in the world then."

All the time in the world...

Warmth bloomed in 9S' chest and his fingers patted rapidly at the side of his coat to help him mitigate a sudden surge of energy. Ghosts of limonene and citral danced on his tongue. He raced to the transport area, biting down his grin and pouring his focus into on keeping his mouth and his auxiliary vents shut. He was sure that if he said so much as 'ready', he would have exploded.

It faded as 801S started adjustments to send him down to Earth. The factory kept an ID log for matching body data to a given unit, but it wasn't designed to communicate personality, consciousness, or memory data. That was supposed to come from the Bunker servers or from already active unit data circulating through planetside networks. 801S had backed him up already in case anything went wrong, but he hoped it didn't come to that.

801S raised his fingers. Five. Then four. Three. Two. (9S took a shallow breath and rubbed itchy, sweatless palms against his coat.) One.

His external interfaces went offline one after the other. His consciousness followed soon after, flicking off with a half-second of what he imagined sleepiness was like. He relaxed into it. That was what transport always felt like. And sure enough, the next thing he knew, his aural system announced its return with the subtle initialization ping of a transporter in-process, the sharp hiss of pressurized pistons releasing, and the mechanical whir as the façade moved.

9S stepped out and stood in the mid-autumn sunlight.

And simply breathed.

Sea air tinged by oil slicks and old parts flowed through his ventilation system, chasing out phantoms of rust from the shores of Sector H. The street was empty. Piles of white tower debris lay where they'd all been pushed to the sidewalks, their sharp edges softened after eighteen months eroding under the wind and rain and constant sun. The cry of a bird echoed out from an empty window far above his head.

Overload teased at his processing cores, from an influx of memory rather than an influx of new information. He'd felt something similar on the occasions when he survived months of solitary, dangerous fieldwork and returned to the Bunker, but the two experiences couldn't truly be compared.

The Bunker never made him feel like he was on that silly rollercoaster. Plummeting into nostalgia, cresting dizzily into the possibility of making new memories, and careening through old ones full of pain, fear, joy, and contentment that all shared the backdrop of this scenery. The worst of his memories lie in the pit half a kilometer from where he stood and on a bridge that couldn't be seen from here. But the best ones surrounded him. Strewn around just waiting to be found like seeds scattered by a kind wind.

Up there he'd sat in a crumbled window and surveyed the newly opened sinkhole while 2B watched rays of light come and go through the ash-darkened clouds. Just around the corner of the building behind him, he'd picked dandelions and clover while poring over Anthurium's book. Deep in the forest a zone away, he'd tasted his first orange and heard for the first time that being YoRHa was something he could embrace.

It was raining somewhere far away. He could smell it on the gust that tousled his hair and clothes. He wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry, so he settled for a whisper to the hollow buildings and piles of shining clouds.

"I'm back…"

The transporter hissed behind him. A tiny gasp followed as 10H tumbled out and clumsily into 9S' grasp. The atmosphere must have seemed heavy to her, her calibrations unfamiliar after years tuned for operation in the minimal gravity of the moon. Her first steps on Earth were messy, but her wide eyes reflected the brilliance of the empty white ruins and the gray-blue sky.

9S looked up over her shoulder. A trio of red pods was floating along behind her. "Uhm…"

She followed his gaze and lost her moment to the lines that crept in under her eyes and around the corners of her mouth. "801S said I should take 006 for communication in case anything happened. It's fine. You know you left your cat demon thing behind?"

"Shadow?" He checked below him. His shadow was a shadow, not the solid-looking void he'd gotten used to. "Pod—"

A comms screen popped up right away. The focus was on 801S, but he was blotted out by a twitching black nose and a vexed red stare. Shadow gave a low series of grunting yowls, pawing at the screen with obvious frustration.

"Seems we neglected the transportability of demonic parties," 801S dead-panned from the background.

"I thought it might work since Shadow's not exactly organic…" 9S smiled apologetically. "Sorry, girl. Looks like I have to bring you back the long way once we're done. Behave up there, okay?"

Shadow's ears drooped. She made a sound he couldn't describe as anything other than an annoyed honk and sulked away.

"Both of you confirmed safely transported planet-side, then. You mentioned some groundwork with Jackass?"

"I need to get in touch with her and make sure that pod is still available, yeah. And I need to let Anemone know as much as possible about what we intend to do."

801S leaned back and flicked his braid back over his shoulder. "You sure we can trust her?"

"Anemone's never been the one I needed to worry about. It's everybody else that could be a problem. And after the last experiences this sector had with us, we have to let the camp know ahead of time that non-infected, normal YoRHa will be walking around. If we don't, that misunderstanding will get people killed."

"Can't say I don't appreciate the prudence. Just be careful okay? I'm on standby if you need support."

The screen cut off. 9S looked back up at the trio of red 006 pods. "Hey… You two are extra right? Pod systems usually come in one primary and two sub-units, but you're all primary units?"

"THAT IS CORRECT."

"Can I get two of you to head to the Forest Kingdom for me?"

"QUERY: TO RETRIEVE ADDITIONAL SCANNER UNITS 4S AND 11S?"

"Yeah. Pod, can you transfer the location data?"

"Go ahead and stay with them when you find them," 10H suggested. "As support. One of you hovering over me is more than enough."

10H got her legs together within a few minutes, but she remained on the skittish side as she accustomed to Earth. Fear of death was still a recent, imminent reality for her, so her reactions were comparable whether they were faced with the big but harmless stubby units or the huge and very much not harmless boars at nosing around near the alley 9S usually took. He gave them an even wider berth than she did. He'd have to make sure when the others were brought back they knew better than to get curious about the wildlife.

She relaxed more as they passed through the east side of the stream, pausing to stare down at schools of machine fish darting between her feet. He let her have a minute. There were no machines around to bother her. No one at the gate to the camp either. The only evidence they weren't entirely alone was a glint of a pair of goggles from a second-floor window just off the entance.

9S shielded his eyes. The android watching them looked familiar. "Wormwood?"

"…Long time no see, YoRHa." The voice wasn't as familiar as the face, but Wormwood had only ever spoken a few static-riddled words to him. He must've gotten his synthesizer fixed. "Who's your friend?"

"Unit 10H. A Healer type. Uh, living." Damn it. Wasn't he supposed to have gotten better at this? "We're here to see Anemone and Jackass."

"Anemone is in. Jackass is not."

"Can you send her a message? Tell her I need to access the ark." He paused and added: "And that I have some data she's going to be interested in."

Wormwood vanished with a nod, and 9S hopped up the ledge from the stream to the length of old gate and barbed wire outside the camp.

"Hey 9S?" 10H lingered at the bottom of the drop-off, swaying slightly with her fingers pressed to her temples. "You mind if I just…stay right here? I think information overload is setting in."

"That should be fine. I'm not gonna go far in, so just call me if you need me."

Passing through the shaded corridor of replicated office buildings that separated the stream and the greater city from the camp was like traveling back in time. It hadn't changed. Except for the garden. It had been cold, churned dirt the last time he looked at it. Grass and white pops of flowers had grown back over it since then, as though it had never been disturbed.

A lunar tear had bloomed there.

Dozens of eyes settled on him, as they always seemed to every time he entered the camp under unusual circumstances. But these weren't the mistrustful eyes from after the tower fell or the alternately frightened and shocked ones from that sham of a trial. These were surprised. He could hear their faint whispers on the breeze, a consistent refrain of 'isn't that…?' and 'look…' scattered by one piercing ' _It's him!_ ' and the subsequent sharp ' _Shh!_ ' that could have only been Alstroemeria and Bouvardia. 9S waved to them feebly, with a crooked smile just barely suppressed from reaching a grin.

It was nice. Being welcomed. As Anemone emerged from her tent and joined him by the flowers, he hoped that would extend to more than just him.

"Good to see you again, 9S."

Her voice melted him before he even registered the gently relieved smile on her face. That somber but generous presence reminded him easily why he felt he could trust her with what was about to happen. She wasn't perfect, but she had always tried to do the right thing. What else could he trust in, if not her?

"You too," he said and meant it more than ever before. "How've things been here?"

"Peaceful. The treaty is holding. Kicked up a bit of fuss from the Army side when you disappeared, but there wasn't much anybody could do about it. What brings you back?"

"It's… a long story."

She crossed her arms and dropped her weight comfortably onto one leg. "Something serious, then."

"Something good, I hope."

In the back of his mind, he'd hoped the debrief wasn't nearly as long as he imagined it to be, but the more he tried to explain succinctly, the more he realized she needed context. He didn't wait for her to ask for it. The same way she had not waited to ask before giving him the benefit of the doubt. Whatever he thought she might need to know, he told her. About the moon, and the night kingdom, and 10H and 801S and the YoRHa manufacturing site and their plans with the ark. About what the attack on the camp really was.

Only when it came to V did he hesitate.

Anemone listened with a grave, quiet face all the way through. When he paused to decide if he should tell her the rest, she wrapped her arms around herself and dropped her voice. "Will you answer me one thing, 9S?"

A chill ran down his back, but he kept himself standing straight. "I will."

"Jackass caught wind of a rumor coming from the mainland. That there was a human way out west. Do you know anything about that?"

"…I do." She stiffened, and his fingers clenched and wrung around his gloves. "I was kind of hoping I'd get to tell you before it reached this far. I'm sure if you're hearing rumors about it, the actual data will make it here before much longer. I'm sorry I didn't tell you but he didn't… _I_ didn't think it would be a good idea. The treaty wasn't signed yet and everything was so volatile after the machine research report. And he never intended to stay. From the moment I met him, he's been trying to find his way back home. He doesn't belong in this world."

He wasn't sure Anemone heard him. Her eyes were turned inward, so far away she might never actually look at him or at anything again. He wished he could've plugged into her the way he had with 801S to reach a perfect understanding. Or just say, 'don't worry, he's not really human'. But he couldn't. That wasn't something he could decide for other androids, no matter how personally true it was to him. Anemone, just like everyone else who had seen or heard of the parts that were obviously non-human, had to come to her own conclusions about what V's existence meant for her.

"Did the mattress help?" He tilted his head, unsure he'd heard her correctly. "The mattress. Did it help?"

His throat tightened inexplicably. "…Yeah."

She took a few shaky breaths, letting her forehead drop into one hand. "Good. That's good."

That was the closest thing to forgiveness he'd probably get out of her, and he would take it. But he didn't want the conversation to end like this. His eyes dropped to the swaying flowers at their feet. "…Do you want us to revive A2?"

"I don't know. Never had the opportunity to have anyone back." A strand of hair slipped over her face as she brushed a tall stalk dotted with tiny white petals with the back of a finger. "Not like I can ask her if that's what she wants."

"I can."

For a second, barely visible within the shadow of her hood, her eyes flashed with more brilliance than he'd ever seen in them. "She's…in the ark?"

"Not everything," he confessed. "She's incomplete. But she remembered enough to hate the Commander. To recognize me. So, she would remember enough to not have forgotten you, Anemone. If you don't want to make that decision for her... I can ask."

She struggled to find words, and in the end, only gave him a silent nod.

He would try it. Later, though; much later. If he had to see A2 up and alive ahead of 2B, he'd probably come to hate her all over again, and he didn't want to. He wanted to keep feeling exactly what he did now, staring at the white flowers growing over the grave Anemone had made for her. A single saving ray of gratitude shining through a peaceful, indifferent twilight.

_"9S?!"_

10H's call was more nervous than anything, but he rushed back to the entrance where she was hiding behind the barbed wire barricade. Just in time for a truck to come to halt with a bouncing screech that made him wince. He'd recognize that jostling mechanical groan anywhere.

Pine waved calmly from the driver's seat. Jackass emerged from the truck's bed, planting a boot on the siding, and looming over them with a smile. "Hey, hackerman. Fancy seeing you back in town."

9S' nose scrunched. Iota was the one who started calling him by that name, and he really hoped it hadn't spread any further than her and Jackass since then. She was in an uncharacteristically cheery mood, which was rarely a good sign.

"Hey, Jackass. Glad you came so quick. You have what I need?"

"I might, I might, but first." She hopped down and held out her hand. "Heard you had something for me?"

_Yep, that's the Jackass I remember._

He transferred her the data he'd found on the lunar server with no fuss. He didn't want anything to do with human data being paired with android manufacturing, but it was the exact kind of thing she and Pine were hoping he'd turn up, and it didn't hurt to stay on their good side.

She checked it right away, her eyes glittering almost greedily as she scanned down the readout. "It's in the spare room," she said distractedly.

By the time he came back with the mangled-up pod, Anemone was gone. So were Pine and the truck. Only Jackass was left, still perusing the data, right where she had been before. She probably wouldn't be going anywhere until she was done, so he nodded to 10H and hopped back into the shallow stream and he led her to the quarry where they would be working until there was no one left on the ark.

4S and 11S were already waiting there, with the two red 006 units floating over them.

"Nines!" 4S nearly knocked 9S off his feet and onto the cold white silicone.

"Woah, easy," 9S laughed. "Good to see you, too. Looks like my hiding spot worked out?"

"I think we've learned about the forest kingdom's ecosystem to write a comprehensive report on it," 11S griped, plucking the extra pod out of 9S' hands and dusting off additional equipment that Jackass had simply left there over the summer. "Why'd you put us with such a weirdo?"

"That machine was the only one I could think of who was friendly and so isolated that even the wide-area virus never affected him. All he ever does is take care of animals."

"I'd _noticed."_ He twisted the dials until the right frequency keened in the back of 9S' head. Only when he was done did he give 10H his attention. "You the H-type? Never seen you before."

"You wouldn't have. I'm 10H. Previously stationed on the lunar server."

11S stammered, caught off guard by that answer. 4S bulldozed right through it. "Nice to meet you! I'm 4S, and this is 11S!"

10H leaned back a little. "Are you always this excited?"

"Only on days when I feel a big victory coming." He leaned back on a slab next to 11S and stretched out. "And I definitely feel like today is gonna be our day."

She smiled with surprising charm. "It'd be nice if that was true."

"His intuition's never wrong," said 9S, plugging a cable into the port at the back of his neck and handing 10H the other end. "I'll be your entry point. Pod, let 801S know we're heading in."

Pods 006 and 153 answered simultaneously. "AFFIRMATIVE."

* * *

The process took longer than 9S wanted.

4S and 11S insisted on going into the partition alone, sparing 9S the responsibility for fielding the natural reaction that would accompany them showing up in the ark again for the first time in half a year. So he stood by. Waiting with only the silent but curious presence of 10H for company, pacing and shifting his weight and wishing there was anything else he could do but wait.

N2 had to know he was there. She'd never shown much interest in this plan, but things might be different now that it was growing closer to fruition every minute. What power would he have to stop her if she decided to get in the way? None. At all. And maybe he was a better person than he'd been when all of this started because nothing made him sicker to his stomach than the idea of them being trapped in here so close yet so far while he could have 2B back regardless of N2's cooperation.

He'd nearly jumped out of his skin when 1S appeared on the pathway with 12H.

"You're really back," he murmured in a slightly shaking voice. Then, gathering himself, he became the same reliable elder he always was. "Do you need logistical support?"

"For now, me and 10H are just going to make sure this actually works. If you want to organize an exit strategy in the meantime, we can reconvene on that once we have the healers out and we know what the process is like."

"What's the status outside?"

"Peaceful. The treaty's still in effect."

He gave an acknowledging nod. There was more on his mind, but he held off any further questions and twitched his fingers forward. "12H, you're up."

"Understood!" She bounced forward, flapping her hands like she was trying to calm herself. Her eyes were bright and watery—9S really hoped she wasn't going to cry. "What do you need me to do?!"

"I have a secondary ID circuit plugged in. I'm going to write your unit address onto it, then… 10H, is there an optimal way you want to do this?"

A disembodied hum answered him. "It's really weird to explain in an environment this articulated. Everything around you is data, but the way it's being processed… Basically, your job is going to be to move 12H's full body of data through the cable into me. I have a partition open and ready for transfer. Just be aware the visualization really depends on you and her and don't halt the transfer even if it looks weird—I'll tell you if something's wrong, but this is an unusual enough process without you accidentally fragmenting her."

9S got the gist, recalling how he'd gotten the data out of Cruel Oath and Virtuous Contract. The final process with them had damaged him because he still had a consciousness outside the ark. It hadn't done any such thing to 2B's data. He didn't need that kind of deep-dive this time around anyway.

It just a simple transfer.

12H's resolution changed as soon as he touched her, down into blocks, just like the Commander. She talked nearly the whole time, mostly in reassurances to let him know she was alright. They cut off abruptly around 50% and 9S hesitated but didn't stop. At 100% she disappeared entirely.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. 1S called out. "10H, report."

10H responded by shushing him sharply. After that, she was quiet for so long 9S' stomach began to feel heavy. Had he messed it up?

"…Unit 12H's data download complete. Transfer was successful and I'm ready to disconnect when you are."

1S and 9S both let out sighs and shared a brief, nervous laugh before 9S disconnected.

Back on the outside, he was greeted with an immediate drilling pain in his head. "Shit… How long were we _in_ there?"

"About two hours." 10H stood, wobbled so much she nearly fell on her face and promptly dropped back to her seat beside him on the carbon slab. "Ow… Is that you, 9S? It puts that much of a strain on your body?"

He pulled both the connector and the spare ID from the back of his neck. Across from him, 4S obligingly turned the pod signal off. "Thanks. It's fine, 10H. The disorientation passes pretty quick. I just can't do that back to back… How about you? Any side effects?"

She pulled the connector from the back of her neck and cautiously stood again. This time she didn't waver. "No, seems like I'm fine once I disconnect."

"That's for the best," said 11S. "If the signal doesn't have any side effects on you, it means the strain will be on the scanners rather than the healers."

"Can't say I see how that's better?"

"There's enough of us to rotate through. But there's only three H-types left including you."

10H stared blankly at 11S. Then at 4S and 9S, their confirmation causing her mouth to fall open. She shuffled on legs less steady than a moment ago toward the mouth of the tunnel. The first few drops of rain were falling. "...Let's go, 9S."

"Should we go with you?" asked 4S.

"No. I doubt 12H is going to be able to handle it if too many people are around. Stay here and rest up. I'll be going back in with whoever is up to it once we're back."

She marched off into the drizzle, and 9S trotted to keep up with her.

"WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTACT UNIT 801S?"

"Just send him a message that we're starting with 12H," 10H answered firmly.

The nervous, slightly overwhelmed newbie to Earth had been traded off for the exasperated custodian who had popped 801S right in the forehead with no qualms. Now that she had someone to heal, the machines and moose didn't matter.

A sense of unreality settled on 9S at the transporter. He'd done this before with one arm and a body wrecked by neglect, and it was a slow, brute force effort made difficult by his poor state. Doing it in near-perfect condition removed the effort from it. Left it impossibly simple. The way was already opened to him, and all he had to do was alter which path the transporter followed to read the ID circuit. It was too easy. The circuit hummed at the back of his neck. It couldn't be this easy.

The transporter opened, and his thought routines vacated.

A female type YoRHa stood in the compartment as perfect as a doll in a brand-new package. 10H and 9S caught her together as the machine spat her out, lowering her carefully to the ground. She had the same narrow face and red-brown hair as 12H, but she was no one—not yet. A body with nothing inside. 10H knelt, propping the body's head up on her thighs and entering a state similar to a hacking trance.

He sat with them, his part otherwise finished. Alone on the outside while 10H populated 12H's body with her memory, her personality, and all of her consciousness data. Everything that she was, poured into a shell that had never been her before.

It began to rain in earnest. The pattering of drops increasing and combining into that continual, isolating whisper that 9S had never liked. 10H came back to her body with a slight shiver and flicked an annoyed glance up at the sky. But she didn't move. She kept her hands to either side of 12H's head and watched the body start to twitch and react.

"Can you hear me, 12H?" 10H asked. "If your aural system is functional, please respond."

12H swallowed and bobbed her head.

"Motor control is good then. Can you access your visual field?"

12H took a deep, shuddering breath. Her auxiliary vents opened. Soon, so did her eyes. She looked at 10H. Past her, and past 9S, up at the sky. Her hand flexed open on the ground, fingers twitching irregularly as rain pooled in her palm. Her other hand closed into a tight fist that she pressing to forehead over her clenched eyes. She attempted to curl up, her body trembling as she hid her face in 10H's leg and—

And _laughed._

"Disorientation and overload of sensory information," 10H diagnosed calmly.

"Should we move her?"

"No." She grabbed the other healer's hand and squeezed in regular, metronomic rhythm. The way 9S remembered 4S doing for him after he finally found 2B in the ark. "Focus on my hand, 12H. It'll pass, just focus on my hand."

12H nodded and continued to shudder with silent laughter as rain streamed down her face.

A year ago, not very far away, 9S had learned what it was to bury someone, the first of so many lessons V left him about grief. Here and now, with 12H flat on her back on the dirty asphalt, helplessly overwhelmed by the world around her and the cold autumn rain on her skin, he marveled at what it was to see someone be born.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so proud of him you guys. ;w;


	21. [R]ose of Antiquity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 405: The old world, the new world, and the Briar Rose.

"Don't you get cold out here?"

We'd been on the ocean for long enough that the stars shouldn't have been novel, but V stared up at the sky in the same place I'd found him yesterday. Perched on the barrel of a disused anti-air cannon on the main deck.

"It is not the worst I have survived." If he meant for that to sound cool, he'd have to erase my memory of him biting my hand first. "Your supplemental maintenance is complete?"

"Yeah, it was nothing special. Used my anti-freeze and got some fancy insulation treatment for my biosynthetic layer."

"How much further to Greenland?"

"Probably another day or two." I walked around behind him and threw my arms over the barrel. "Water's rough this time of year apparently."

He didn't answer.

The inside of the boat was warm, quiet, and utilitarian, but it was also narrow and busy with active crew androids who didn't talk to us but clearly watched us, same as we watched them. Probably not much of a wonder why he kept coming out here, but I got the feeling there was something else too. A hush that had gathered around him like a blanket, woven from heavy but invisible thoughts.

"You doing okay?"

The look I got told me I had intruded by asking but proved my intuition right. "Do I seem otherwise?"

"You've been in your head a lot since we left Sector H," I said. "Worried about Briar Rose?"

"There's no point in worrying before I know what it is."

I was already assuming it would be a problem regardless of what it was. Briar Rose couldn't be someone dangerous or even intimidating. Theta's response to the name lacked the intensity that would have suggested either of those things. Even Hamelin got more of a rise of out her when she showed up on a channel that was supposed to be private. Briar bewildered Theta more than anything. My impression was that it had influence but didn't take direct action very often. It also wasn't a commander, though Hamelin had mentioned superiors.

My efforts to figure out more than that hadn't gotten me anywhere. Theta refused to say more than 'It's classified' and Scheherazade refused to say anything at all.

"So, what is on your mind then?"

"Curious today aren't we."

I propped my face up on one hand. "Is it bad dreams?"

His face scrunched. "Bad dreams…?"

"You slept like a baby all summer when it was just us out in the middle of nowhere," I said with a slight smirk. "But when we got to the stacks you started sleeping like shit again."

"You're mistaking which of those was the abnormality."

"Alright, so we're back to square one: What are you so preoccupied with? You know I'd help you if you told me."

I didn't get an answer and Griffon didn't show up to helpfully pry V out of himself. Probably out at sea where fish wouldn't be scared off by the ship's engine. I'd had him for a moment but the straight punch of offering to help might have been too much.

"What do androids think hell is?"

My mouth slackened, empty as my thoughts tripped to catch up to wherever that had come from. "That's… I don't know. Whatever humans said it was in the records. A big hole where you go to be punished after you die. Fire, demons, big buff guy with a goat head?"

The laugh that escaped him was gentle, almost fond. Enough to let me know I was wrong, but not harsh enough to suggest I was stupid for not knowing any better.

"Hell," he corrected. "Is a darkness without stars."

Whatever V had experienced there, it was still with him.

I swallowed, but my tongue was rubbery and dry. Good or not, a human shouldn't sound so familiar with a place like that. But V had plenty of reason to sound so certain. It wasn't all that long ago he'd been there. Even the ravine wasn't even the first time in his life he'd gone to hell and come back. And while it was true he hadn't been entirely human during his more extended stay, that didn't bring me any comfort. That thought ended in spikes. It ended in Vergil.

"There are plenty of stars here," I offered. It might not be my position to comfort him, but it was my job to keep him safe, and that meant keeping his mind clear enough to focus on real threats. "Try to get some rest, we won't be on this boat forever and I doubt the night kingdom is gonna be a light hike."

I patted the cannon and ambled off, but before I was back inside, his voice wafted through my aural sensors like smoke, low and nearly consumed by the rush of the waves

 _"Be near me when my light is low, be near me when my faith is dry, be near me when I fade away…_ _The twilight of eternal day."_

That didn't sound like anything he'd have read out of Hibiscus' collection. It also didn't sound quite like the kind of poetry V usually recited from memory, though I had trouble putting my finger on what was so different. The way he said it reminded me of the old Fern arranging wrinkly, over-ripe oranges in whatever meaningful shapes she thought would make a better offering. Silent, citrus-scented supplication meant to invite genuine human presence into a house full of her fucked up shadow puppets of humanity.

The gods of this world had been dead a long time. The ones that weren't, V had killed with his own hands. If it was prayer he was offering, I was the only one around to hear it.

* * *

From Greenland, through the northwestern passages, down through the North American tundra, to a location which had no name. That was how Scheherazade described our route, and that was exactly how we proceeded.

I discovered along the way that she had neglected to mention a few details.

Like the scrambler that transformed the small square of my built-in map functionality into a useless mess of distortion and static. We entered the operational range right after we left the Greenland outpost. It was so bad that even Pod 042 was affected. The moment I was beyond line of sight, he had to start employing special scanners and triangulating based on the signal strength of my black box. The absence of sunlight meant a limited power supply, so we couldn't waste his energy on things like that. For the most part, he was relegated back to the backpack. We'd relied on only what I could see ever since.

Which happened to include a lot of dragon weapons. I identified them by the red radio-tower glow from the crowns of horns over their heads and matching lights on the tips of their wings. Otherwise, they were black voids against the backdrop of silver-dusted night and grey ghosts above our heads when the clouds left us with only the lights on the ship. No matter how I strained, they never came close enough for me to make out what they really looked like.

The northwestern passage was the kind of glacial nightmare I'd only ever read about in the old records of the arctic. The lights on the ship illuminated mountains of ice with pure blue-green caps grading down into oxidized rainbows from trapped chemicals and trace elements left by thousands of years of pollution. One of the crew said we were actually sailing through channels between islands that had been iced over for thousands of years, but that didn't stop me nearly kissing the ground when we reached it.

On land, we were treated to fully operational vehicles. Not the rusted, salvaged relics or hammered together function-only trucks found in the day kingdom, but sturdy, well-maintained trucks. With functional headlights and windows of tempered glass and covered beds that wouldn't spare you from the ambient temperature but kept the bitterness of the wind out even when it so frequently threatened to overturn the whole vehicle. We didn't walk on foot more than seven hours out of a week-long journey, so I had plenty of time to observe the night kingdom's infrastructure, minimalist as it was.

Gravel sprinkled on roads of packed snow. Not a single building anywhere. Frequent checkpoints. Squads of three to seven androids every few kilometers, bundled up so tight they looked like little bears. Every single one of them did the same thing: ask us where we were going, confirm our way wasn't blocked, and warn us how long we had until the weather turned bad. Despite consistently gruff demeanors, no one asked even once who we were or what our business was.

The strangest thing was that it wasn't that even that cold once we got away from the ocean. Not the way it should have been. Trees started to crop up. First in patches around pipelines and ice-coated comms towers, then in scattered stand-alone clusters, and finally into dense, dark forest that stretched as far I could see. I caught V looking at them sometimes, as perplexed as I was by the frigid but far from punishing environment.

I knew we had reached our destination when the dark was abruptly broken up by harsh white rays shining into the sky and bouncing off the few sparse clouds. We left our transport behind and climbed a cliff-face partly illuminated by one of those lights. Near the middle, I realized it was a plateau. An artificial one with barely any frost on it. Seven sets of red horns glowed on and off and on again from the high edge where dragons perched just out of the light. Below, all the way out to the horizon, comms towers glowed that same red light in the same slow strobes.

Scheherazade rustled beneath her cloak and pressed something into an odd-looking scanner. It didn't make a sound, but it lit a dull green and the door opened with a heavy mechanical growl. I glanced at the words still blinking on the panel as we passed.

key: rubrum v03.5733 registration: zera-c-08

Beyond the entrance, the facility stretched away in a ring. Natural grey-brown stone forming the outer walls while panes of black glass blocked out the interior in a smaller, concentric circle. The floor hummed, and the air had the kind of mild heat I associated with heavy machinery in an adjacent room, yet I didn't see so much as a switch for the few bright lights recessed into the ceiling. We passed one or two doors in the outer wall, but overall, it was a barren place. Dusty and unkempt and without so much as a cobweb.

I'd have branded it lifeless if not for the persistent feeling we were being observed.

I glanced at Theta's face for signs of what we were about to be faced with. Any fear or discomfort. Neither were there, though her gaze roamed from time to time. I checked Tau's face too, but she had the same lazy look to her as ever. Like she'd rather be sitting down.

 _They've never been here either_.

"Inside," said Scheherazade.

We'd reached a tinted glass door nestled in between two black panes. My head throbbed the moment it opened, and V stood a little straighter, his eyes narrowing.

The room was like the rest of the facility. Circular, circular, circular; all the way down in rows of concentric rings bound in gray stone, each smaller and lower in continuous steps to a bottom level where water flowed freely around a stone pillar with an intricately carved bust of a rose on top. That was likely the dead center of the facility. A wide circular skylight took up most of the high ceiling enough though it couldn't possibly show any real sky. Instead, a diffuse yellowish light filtered down on the bizarre contents of the room.

It was a garden.

Flowers erupted out of every level of the carefully terraced auditorium, right down to the center. The imitation sunlight bounced on healthy green leaves that swayed in the cross breeze provided by a few silent ventilation ducts. After Gibraltar, it wouldn't have impressed me at all if the whole room were filled with lunar tears, but there wasn't a single one anywhere in sight. Normal wildflowers, top to bottom, filling the room with the fresh scent of the recently bloomed as well as the faded, sweet-rot scent of blossoms past their time.

It took Scheherazade walking ahead before any of us took a single step. She led us to the center, and I saw the rose atop the pillar was made of steel.

"Hmm. You must be V."

V's expression blanked. I did my best to keep a straight face and immediately accept that the fully synthesized voice was coming from the flower. A flower that was likely just a harmless-looking extension of the vast but invisible system buzzing faintly up through the soil into the soles of our boots.

"You'd be Briar Rose, then," I said, scrutinizing the fixture like it might decide to get up and walk. "What are you supposed to be."

"Were you not briefed ahead of time?"

"They don't have the necessary clearance," Theta pointed out dutifully.

"The unknown and the dark are great fears for a human. Surely it would have been better to alleviate at least one given the conditions of the night kingdom?"

"If it was easy for me to ignore high-level confidentiality orders without permission, I wouldn't be an effective command model."

"This statement is accurate. Understood." The petals sprawled and stretched open with a creak that made my knuckles crack. "Welcome. I am the generation, management, and installment administrator responsible for the dissemination of false memories into every android that has been manufactured since the end of the first Machine War. Operational code: Briar Rose."

My eyes wandered again over the garden. "False memories all come from _here_?"

"This statement is inexact. However, a technical explanation would not be comprehensible to you. According to Theta's reports, you accessed certain records about Sleeping Beauty? That was my predecessor. I was created from what remained when it shut down at the end of the Gestalt Project. It is best if you think of my construction and capabilities as mostly identical."

"I see," V said with a hint of amusement. "You are also a computer operating through maso."

"To a more limited extent. There isn't much left in this world, so I run on more traditional sources of power with maso reserved for high-priority programs."

I shuddered to think what I might be feeling if Briar was more like its predecessor. "What kind of high-priority programs?"

"You might best understand it as R&D."

Out here, that could only mean one thing. "You made the dragon weapons?"

"This statement is false, though I cannot deny involvement. The dragon weapons resulted from an experiment I deemed a failure. The associated research was repurposed for military use."

"But you also kept us out of Army hands. I don't get it—whose side are you on?"

"Humanity's."

I tilted my head backward, eyes rolling toward the ceiling. "We were all built for humanity, Briar. I'm asking whether you're HHRMO or Army."

"If a binary choice must be made, I am likely the former."

Seeing my lip curl at the wishy-washy answer, Theta helpfully stepped in to fill the gap. "The relationship between the two is malleable, Unit 8E. On the dayside, the Army is the primary operations group and holds eminent jurisdiction while HHRMO influence is largely limited to preservation endeavors completed in conjunction with local resistance forces. The power balance in the night kingdom runs opposite, in part due to the success of the dragon weapons. Differences in priority leading to subterfuge are not uncommon."

"This statement is accurate. There are many things I can do, and many more that I cannot. If androids were to be destroyed completely, the number of tests I would be able to complete would fall to zero. A symbiotic relationship with Army forces is mutually beneficial. Theta was provided to the day kingdom for this reason."

Theta scowled, but nothing short of her taking a swing at me could've stopped me leering at her. Out of the deep well of my good manners, I hid it behind the tips of my fingers. "Briar built you?"

"Indirectly," Theta said frostily.

"The directness does not affect the correctness of the statement," said Briar. "I did not manufacture you, but I did create your design documents and submit the original proposal for your and Hamelin's creation."

My grin evaporated. I was still trying to digest that when V let out a quiet huff of a laugh. "I see. That is how she knew immediately that I was not a weapon."

"Hamelin holds the body of research regarding mankind's experiments with maso and magic. She's also the lead designer of the dragon weapons. I've been in contact with her about you ever since the legion… _demon_ attack." Her expression darkened, and she let her eyes fall, heavy and hooded. "I suspect your reaction at Gibraltar was the reason she opted to come to the Horizon band personally."

Information overload was starting to creep up my spine like the mercury in an old analog thermometer. I knew of the scanner's research, but the old Fern hadn't made it her business and neither had I. Everything I knew about Sleeping Beauty I had learned in the past five minutes and the only bit I cared about was the skillset it had passed on to its descendant. Managing memory. Distributing memory. Those did seem like things best left to an automated system, same as construction and installation of AI. But to my knowledge, none of our factories could _think_ the way Briar did. They didn't ask to meet people and I highly doubted they came up with new types of androids to build all on their own.

I needed simpler information to focus on for a moment. "Did you make the rest of Legacy Reclamation's androids too," I asked, hiking a thumb at Tau. "Like her?"

"To a lesser degree."

If that answer could be taken at face value, Briar had only taken an active role in models who had archival data pre-installed. Someone else had taken point on Rho and Tau, and probably a few more like them that I hoped I never had the displeasure of meeting.

"You haven't said why you wanted to meet me," said V.

"There is no point." The petals curled with another tiny, unpleasant scream. "You are not what I hoped."

"You mean he's not human," I muttered.

"This is neither an accurate nor inaccurate statement. It is irrefutable that he is the most human presence this world has seen since the start of the Gestalt Project. But he is not what I need. His presence is a grand and useless accident."

V smiled with eyes so flat I couldn't parse the emotion behind them. "Has my existence has disappointed you?"

"This statement is built on a faulty premise. Disappointment relies on the presence of hope. I have experienced neither."

Not that Briar had tried to hide it, but it sank in at that moment that it was a computer. One that ran on a certain amount of magic, but still a series of algorithms working on a few set tasks for thousands of years. A glorified, flower-shaped pod that didn't care about the war and never had. I doubted it cared about androids either.

"What does that mean for me now?" asked V.

"Should it mean something?"

The innocence of the question seemed to jar V more than any other single thing about the conversation. Despite his lazy attitude toward worrying ahead of time, the assumption of danger in the present came naturally to him. Briar Rose defied that sort of tension. It lacked malice. Skepticism and intimidation found no purchase on it.

"Briar," said Scheherazade. Her first words since we came in here, and I could tell I wasn't the only one who'd forgotten she was in the room with us. "You should shelter him."

"This isn't a hospitable location. I would suggest Node #10 instead."

"No fish there."

The flower twitched and shivered through its petals. "An accurate statement. Understood."

" _Understood_?" I repeated incredulously, still trying to absorb that Briar's primary objection was that this place was a shithole and we could go somewhere nicer. "Aren't you the one in command here?"

"There is no chain of command. Scheherazade and I are beholden to the same authority."

"And that authority is?"

"Humanity."

That was the second time it had said that. I pulled in a deep, carefully silent breath as it settled on me like the slow onset of night that it might be a serious answer.

"If you're feeling accommodating," said V. "The location of the dragon would be useful."

"Unfortunately, that asset has been lost."

Theta's shoulders stiffened. They wouldn't be talking about the red one then. They'd lost the white dragon from Gibraltar. I wondered how that might have happened, and whether lost meant 'missing' or 'destroyed'.

Or, given the number of artificial dragons we'd seen, if it might mean 'used up'.

"He's looking for a way back to his own world," Theta explained. "I don't know the full details, but finding the red dragon appears to have some connection to that."

"The _red_?" My stomach sank. If even Briar's respectfully uninterested cadence could take an incredulous turn at the idea of knowing where the red dragon was, that wasn't a good sign. "You won't find that. No one ever has. But there may be an answer nonetheless. A moment while I locate them…"

"Friends of yours?" V asked.

"Experts in magic-related research. If anyone can help you, they can. Ah, they're at Node #17. It would take you longer to reach there than it will for them to come here. You may wait if that is satisfactory."

"Isn't this…" I ventured weakly, over a heavy, painfully dry tongue. "Aren't we in a highly classified location?"

"This is an accurate statement. And one of apprehension if I have interpreted your concern correctly. You did not infiltrate, you were invited. You are where you were intended to be." Without waiting and with one last small shriek, the steel flower closed. "There is no need to remove you."

V and I shared a look, and the next moment we were back up the terraces and back out into the hallway. That was enough for him, but it wasn't for me. I led us further, back to the entrance, only began to calm down when the heavy door cracked open and blasted us with cold air.

"Watch the weather." I stifled the self-preservation protocol that tried to run. Scheherazade walked after us in no rush and passed through the entrance ahead of us. "It is sudden. The dragons, sometimes unpredictable. I will wait."

I didn't make it to 'for what'. She crossed her arms and stood right beside the scanner. Right. We couldn't get back in without her key.

The click of a sensible cause and effect relationship pushed information overload back, but it bothered me that she wasn't concerned enough to follow us. Then again, I'd have been hard-pressed to find something that _didn't_ bother me at that moment. At the plateau's base, I dropped down on a stump that had long since petrified, staring out into the dark tangle of evergreens. I kept trying to organize my thoughts, but they rushed by like the steam venting up from under my shirt.

"How much of that did you actually understand?"

"Enough."

"And how much did you think was bullshit?"

After a few seconds of consideration, V answered carefully, "Everything Briar said, I believe to be true." He wagged his cane to preempt me saying anything hasty. "But there are many things it did _not_ say."

"Like how it didn't actually tell me who it answers to?"

"Didn't it?"

"I'm the only android on this planet who can claim to answer to a human and not be full of shit, V."

I watched that information circle uselessly behind his eyes. It had no place to go. No correlating actions, nothing to get immediately suspicious or riled up about. Who Briar Rose answered to was too far outside his sphere of concern, and having nothing to anchor it to, it was bound to end up forgotten.

"It also did not answer what it wanted." He rolled the cane across the backs of his fingers. "Since I am not what it hoped I would be."

"I have a lot to say about _that_ , but I'm still trying to figure out how it knew that from just looking at you."

"Another thing it did not say." He shrugged. "But it is a magic computer."

"Yes, V. It's a magic computer built from a different magic computer, and it's out here in the middle of goddamn nowhere running experiments that can apparently result in a few thousand dragon weapons, handling the administration of the entire android false memory system as far back as the First Machine War _as a_ _low priority job_ , and casually designing new androids while claiming to serve humanity and being completely detached from any known command structure."

V stared at me without judgement, which was more than I could say for the inky shape that took form over his shoulders. "Sheesh lady bot, you gonna blow or what?"

I dragged my fists up over my face and through my hair. "I can't get a read on that thing. Or anything out here."

"First time in a different world?" Griffon sneered. "We haven't known shit since we first arrived, and we've been gettin' along fine so far!"

V pushed the cane up under Griffon's beak. "You seem unusually upset."

"And you're unusually calm," I sighed. "I'd love a reason to be relaxed because right now I feel like there's something wrong and I just can't put all of this together in a way that explains why."

"I am interested enough in the possibility of a different way home to engage with Briar as if its indifference is genuine. Don't mistake that for evidence that I am putting my trust in Briar."

"Then where are you putting it?"

"In my instincts." The cane hooked around my chin, tugging my face his way. The ambient gray light bouncing down from the rays pointed over our heads was enough for me, but I could tell he was tracking my face by my optic lights. "And yours as well."

I swallowed, the chill of metal sharp against my throat. "And if my instincts said that we should get the hell out of here?"

"Have they?"

"…Not yet." I broke my gaze first, my fingers folding and clenching around one another. "Not if there might be a way home for you if we're patient. But something a lot bigger than us is going on, V. Something I can't make sense of, and we came very close to getting drawn into it. The only reason that didn't happen is because you're—I don't even know."

"Not human enough."

"You're plenty human. Enough for the gods. So all I heard was that a computer wants more from you than gods did."

"Or merely something very different," he countered, looking up to the plateau. "Hold tight to your suspicions. But remember as well that we are neither trapped nor out of options."

My laugh yielded to a lethargic sigh. Honestly, it was nice to hear his bottom line and know he was keeping an eye on it. I stood, feeling stiff and a bit creaky from the cold. "Come on. We're down here already; might as well see if Scheherazade was right about the fish. Save BB's stuff for an emergency."

A sly crinkle appeared at the corner of V's eye. "He's BB now?"

"It's shorter, shut up."

We didn't have to go far. The area was riddled with frozen lakes easily identified by a conspicuous absence of trees. The ice was a pain to get through, but nothing a few punches couldn't solve. V stared up at the sky again while we waited, gone back into his own head the same as before.

It occurred to me that V might be looking for the moon. That cocky scanner did say V would miss him, but somehow, I didn't think that was it. It wasn't like V to get distracted by something like that, especially in a situation where he didn't believe he was safe.

"What will you do if Briar is able to send me on my way?"

The question slammed into my chest like the fist of a goliath. If it was that easy…I was done, wasn't I?

Mission complete.

The line tugged, and I threw myself into tugging back. Couldn't say I recognized the creature on the other end of the hook when I finally managed to pull it up, but it only had one head, so it was probably fine. I glanced back the way we'd come, but V took the fish right out of my hand and stared at me expectantly. The scent of burning scales had extra bite on the cold air.

I smiled too wide. "That your way of asking if I'll miss you, Shakespeare?"

"It is my way of suggesting you give the matter some thought, given the company you would be left with." He plucked a bone from his tongue and wiped his mouth. "It's possible you will need to disappear, and quickly, if you remain sure you don't want to be reset."

I shivered. I was still sure I didn't want to be reset. Knowing what I _didn't_ want came easy to me. It was the other thing that never seemed to coalesce when I dared to consider it. I didn't want to think about having to live past this mission.

And I really didn't want to think about why my first response to the idea of V leaving was that it was too soon.

This was meant to be work. Atonement was supposed to include suffering, but when I thought of what had happened since I chose to help V, I didn't think of Sector H, or Tau, or any of the bad or painful things that had happened.

Instead, I thought of a truck that smelled like piss whenever it got humid and 49 navigating with one arm because V had fallen asleep on the other one and how I finally got what all those old books meant when they mentioned wind that smelled like summer. Of sitting behind rolled-up windows, just the three of us in our own small, safe world; misted glass and dull metal a barrier between us and the outside and all the things that had ever happened to us or because of us. Like the only versions of us that had ever existed were the versions that waited on the side of the road for the storms to pass. I thought of an android I had targeted and used but not killed, wishing me luck in my bloodstained shirt that was too big for her, and fleeing everything she'd ever known in search of a place where flowers grew.

The old Fern might have called those moments blessed. For me, who'd only ever asked to be cursed and destroyed, those contented memories did nothing but twist my insides until I thought they would rip.

"I'll figure something out." He stared right through that half-feigned negligence like it wasn't even there. I had no other refuge. No other way to deal with this unexpected interest in what would happen to me when he was gone. That should have been well beyond the horizon of his concerns. The little things he did that were not real kindnesses always felt like being warmed by a passing light, but whatever this was felt like being scalded. "What," I went on, half-defensive, half clinging to indifference. "I will. Even if it's just finding a snowdrift to have a nap in until the coast is clear, I'm not sticking around to deal with Tau and Theta at the same time."

"I could always buy you time, lady bot~" Griffon fluttered over and latched onto my shoulders with a low cackle. "Really light up the night for our first date."

I snorted, and out of a helpless sense of gratitude toward that dumb bird, I scratched under his beak. "Do a good job, I might consider agreeing that it's a date."

"Wah—really?! Do I get a kiss at the end?"

"Maybe. If you don't end up as dragon snack."

Griffon puffed up, full of pride and electricity, already hooting and making boasts he couldn't live up to. Wisteria's warning lingered in the back of my mind. I thought for sure I had chosen once but being content threw that into doubt. I didn't want to think about anything. Not about whether I was fighting to live or fighting to die. As long as I kept fighting it didn't have to matter, and V wasn't gone yet. I glanced aside, expecting to catch him making that inconvenienced but long-suffering expression he usually leaned on when I riled Griffon up. But his attention was sidetracked again. This time by something in his hand.

Snow seemed to be falling through his fingers, even though when I looked up, there wasn't a cloud in the sky.


	22. Tesselation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 407: Patterns forming, patterns repeating, patterns fading.

****Fern****

V dozed without a care. A sleep so light he peeked at me when I jolted up and skittered one way and the other, one step contradicting the next as I searched for something that wasn't there. His head lifted, and I forced myself still. I had to curb my own sourceless tension because if he asked me what was wrong I wouldn't be able to answer. I would have no explanation for the keening of my black box.

Two seconds were missing from my memory.

There were no flags or errors to check, and I wasn't a scanner. I couldn't go in and check my own diagnostics the in-depth way. So, I sat back down beside V, loosely crossed my arms and legs, and retraced the space around those two seconds through my lingering physiological responses.

Tightness in the muscular cabling below my chest plates and in the dead center of my back: shock. A sunken, shaky feeling low in my core, stiffness, and heightened pulse: fear. And the telltale tingle of my NFCS on my fingertips, a fraction of a second away from activation.

Between a fight or flight response, I'd been ready to fight. More than ready—I'd been in the middle of loading up a weapon.

That didn't happen for nothing. For a second, I'd seen something that put me on edge. Realized it was someone or some _thing_ I didn't recognize, and it must have been close enough that I went straight for my combat protocols. Yet there was no sign of anything like that. Not even a crushed blade of grass or a snapped stem that wasn't from my own boots. My insistent prods at those two blank seconds didn't trigger the return of any memory, but threat assessment subroutines filled the space with a shape I could not possibly have made up on my own.

A person-shaped void. Like the night kingdom itself had walked in from outside and rejected the room's otherwise omnipotent faux sunlight. Like a trick of the light or a blip in my visual feed standing a breath away from me and V. It was sort of thing I might have chalked up to Shadow playing games if she were with us.

But she wasn't. There was nothing in the garden with us, except for Briar Rose.

I got up again, this time without jumping like someone had put a shock baton to my back. V glanced at my empty spot and up to gauge me for whether or not he should be alert before he settled back into his doze, cane in hand.

Outside the auditorium, the glass door closed behind me with a gentle click. The world clicked with it as the energy in the room abruptly cut off, and the faint but persistent pressure alleviated.

Androids rarely ever forgot their implanted memories. Sometimes if the information in them didn't make sense or was stress-inducingly different from the actual android personality, recall became difficult, but it was a vanishingly rare occurrence. Wisteria had probably forgotten most of the people she killed, but I would have bet my black box she could tell me about her implanted memory in excruciating detail. It was scarily persistent that way, as permanent as a base parameter, whether their owners loved, hated, or were apathetic toward those memories.

Who was to say that the being that made and installed memories couldn't take them away?

"You can still hear me, can't you." I glared up at the ceiling. "Briar."

A much tinier flower than the one in the garden opened with a creak above my head. "Is something wrong?"

"What the hell were you doing?"

"I do not understand your question."

"Just now in the garden!"

"That statement does not provide any additional clarity."

"Something was in there with us," I hissed, pacing below the flower. If I could have reached it, I probably would've torn it out of the ceiling. "And I conveniently can't remember what it was."

"If I were to say that my sensors did not detect anything, I theorize that you would not believe me."

"Spot-on analysis."

"Unfortunate, as that statement is true. I do possess materialization programs, but they require a significantly greater investment of time than two seconds to initialize. Similarly, my memory capabilities require infrastructure that is not present at this node."

My gloves creaked in my tightening grip. "You didn't see anything or do anything, and I freaked out for no goddamn reason then."

"That is unlikely to be an entirely accurate representation of events." The flower closed, and a different one, about as small, opened in the far wall at eye level. "Your specialization is covert infiltration among ground units for the purpose of execution. It follows that it would be a substantial part of your type-based behavioral programming to gather information on relevant environmental, political, organizational, and social circumstances at any location you are assigned to."

"And? What are you getting at?"

"It is possible you are experiencing a distress response due to an inability to acquire adequate context for your present surroundings."

"Oh my god." I laughed, almost doubling over as my stomach shook. I couldn't help it. "You think I'm crazy!"

"That statement is both inaccurate and inflammatory. Your experience is not in question. The nature of it is not known, but you are a highly sophisticated android with unusual sensory capabilities. It is your insistence that I am responsible for what you experienced that I am attributing to a stress response. Regardless of the source, agitated and aggressive base states frequently lead to misreading of external intention."

"Let's say you're right." I stalked up to the flower, digging my fingers into the wall on either side of it. "You haven't given me intentions to read in the first place. You told us what you are and what you do, but not what you actually want. If V was—was what you wanted him to be, what were you going to do with him?"

"It was my intention to study the shape of his soul. Nothing more."

"Are you implying that V doesn't have one?"

"That statement is inaccurate. It exists; however, it is significantly more…" The petals swirled, twisting into sharp corkscrews before relaxing back into the shape of a rose. "Complicated than I anticipated."

Regardless of whether we agreed on what measure of human V was or not, I couldn't call that an unreasonable conclusion. I knew how far down that iceberg went, and if Briar could glimpse beyond the surface to see even half of what I could, it had good reason to abandon its cause. V was plenty human, but even I couldn't say with a straight face that he was normal.

"What were you actually built to do, Briar?"

"There was an effort to reboot the Gestalt project very shortly after it failed. I am one of a number of that project's reconstructed systems. The others were faulty, in many cases. Unstable copies based on lost or incomplete files or an irreconcilable change in the materials and time available for production. The effort failed, so in the end, none of us were utilized for our intended purposes."

"Until the war."

The petals curled inward. "I cannot say so definitively for cases outside myself. The formation of the HHRMO rendered me active well before the war. I was a much smaller system then and androids frequently came to me with data to keep, stories to tell, artifacts to hold, blueprints of things that were and might not ever be again if someone did not archive them."

"Legacy Reclamation." Finally, a connection that I could actually understand. "You were the early library for Legacy Reclamation."

"That is not an inaccurate statement."

"And what have you been trying to do all this time? What are all your experiments for?"

"I am attempting to solve a certain equation left in my data. The last thought of my predecessor. I believe it would accomplish what the Gestalt Project could not."

I'd never been so relieved to be disappointed. When it said it served humanity it really did mean it, just not in the same sense I did. A computer built before the war _would_ still be working on old world problems even now.

 _Good fucking luck with that._ I took a breath and smoothed down the spikes of my danger-heightened senses. None of this answered what the hell happened in the garden. What the hell could be lurking around in here that wouldn't come up on Briar's sensors?

"Has this conversation come to a close?" it asked.

"Gimme a sec." My questions didn't have the urgency that came with danger anymore, but that didn't mean I didn't have plenty. Most of them were idle as river pebbles. All except one that came to her like a stone skipping in reverse. "Out in Sector H, there was an on-going HHRMO requisition for YoRHa parts. They were getting delivered to the night kingdom. Are you the one responsible for that?"

"That statement is accurate."

My fingers dug deeper into the wall, dark stone crumbling to the floor. "What are you doing with them? No, forget it—you want them for study. To help you solve your equation. I get it. What do YoRHa components have to do with that?"

"The black box was a downstream result of one of my more recent efforts. Possibly the most successful, though I didn't realize it at the time. I have followed the genesis of your models with great interest."

Golden flecks gathered around my wrists. "That's a really fucking hilarious thing to say to me considering the project's designated end state."

"It was not meant to be a humorous statement. I am not involved with the militarization process of any single product of my research. I was also not involved, directly or indirectly, in the actual 'project' YoRHa. I would have eliminated the redundancies and made far better use of you if I had." The flower fluttered, as if uncertain. "Granted, I've never fully grasped the nature of group morale, so I may not be qualified to comment on the utility of the plan where it concerns other androids."

I smiled with no intention to hide that I'd burn this entire facility down.

I'd always been off-put by Pascal and his odd innocence. But I'd have taken a hundred of him over Briar. It hadn't done anything wrong, technically. Still, I sizzled at every syllable of that detached little speech. Wasn't that everything that androids prided themselves on not being? Even YoRHa had hearts, fucked up as that was. Briar was everything we'd been taught machines were, just with the handy ability to articulate itself. It had spent thousands of years mixing memories and not one of them had left a dent in its own emotional range.

No wonder all of Legacy Reclamation's androids could be so cold and uncanny.

"8E."

I whirled to find Scheherazade standing behind me, precisely outside the limit of my reach. She didn't seem herself—or at least she didn't seem like the disinterested statue I'd become familiar with. This Scheherazade was dangerously present, the smolder in her eye a signifier of mastery over what might otherwise have been a wildfire.

"Hamelin is coming."

A spark jumped the distance between us. "When? _Why?"_

"With the others, she comes uncalled." She moved toward the glass door and stared down into the garden. "He interests her."

Maybe Briar was more right about my programming than I thought. Despite the climbing blaze and my clenched teeth, coils of tension unwound elsewhere as I processed Briar avoiding contact with Hamelin, her coming anyway, and Scheherazade deciding that was the kind of development that required warning me personally ahead of time.

"She didn't know he was human last time we met, but you make it sound like she might not have acted too differently if she did."

Scheherazade's silence didn't bother me this time. It was permeable. More like a curtain than a solid wall now that someone she didn't trust but couldn't kill was entering the equation. Every few seconds that curtain blew aside, and I could see her arranging the next string of words meant to reach me. Preparing words seemed to require an unusual amount of internal construction.

If it took me that much work to talk, I would have avoided the hassle too.

"The old magic," she said deliberately. "Is not dead in this kingdom. Mind this."

 _Old magic…?_ "Like white chlorination?"

Her head snapped around. Open, naked terror doused even the smallest gleam of her anger toward Hamelin. And her terror knew things. Things I wanted to know.

"He…?" she asked, breathlessly pointing beyond the door.

"Cured," I said. "After he killed the gods."

I couldn't tell if she was drowning or burning inside herself. If she had wretched, I'd have left it to a coin toss whether the smoke would have been white or black. She closed in on me with the swift implacability of a falling meteor but made no move to touch me,

"Explain this. _All_ of this."

"Sure." I crossed my arms, the black shape in the absence of my memory still fresh in my mind. If Briar didn't know what it was, or even that it was here, that was a problem all by itself. I needed to widen my net. "There's something I'd like to ask you about, too. So let's talk."

* * *

****9S****

"3S should already be waiting for us. Let's head in."

The No. 1 personality is meant for leadership. 1S is no different, even though scanners are not intended for frontline work. It is probably because he is a No. 1 with extensive experience in back-end support that the sub-network is orderly when 9S follows him inside. While there is buzzing energy in the air, the excitement it represents is a controlled one. Only a few androids mill around the exit, staring at it expectantly in between pacing like restless animals.

They stop in their tracks when they see 9S.

They know. Every single one of them knows now. It would only have created more chaos later to not inform them about V before the data from Sector H reached the city.

_He's the one right—the 9S model? He met the human?_

_I heard he's bigger than any android and has a tattoo, is that true?_

_No, no, he's small and travels with a lucky blue bird, right?_

_Has he ever been to the amusement park? Did he recognize any of the rides?_

_He must have been amazing, right?_

Unpleasant heat wells up in 9S. Their eyes are so full as they look at him. Of assumptions. Of questions he doesn't want to hear any more than he wants to give them the kinds of answers they are clearly expecting. All of them operate according to the last configurations of their bodies and they are full of hope that the thing they are still technically programmed to long for above all else might be something that they can know for themselves. And it's fine. Whatever way they want to think of V is their business.

It doesn't mean 9S has to participate.

"V's just V," he mutters. His voice is weak and sulkier than he likes. It also comes with low, hissing spite that startles him as much as it does the androids close enough to overhear him.

1S glances back. 9S is unsure what configuration his face could make to describe the heavy, heated lead sensation in his stomach, but the other scanner places a hand on his shoulder and keeps it there as they walk.

"Apologies," he says diplomatically to the stunned female models. "We're on business right now."

It is amazing to 9S how far the small act goes to calm him down.

All of the No. 1's are reliable, but the older scanner's humble competence has little in common with the buoyant confidence of 1B or the staunch sobriety of 1D. There's something about him that makes 9S wonder if 1S has ever experienced feelings of responsibility and pressure similar to Adam's. They are nothing alike, but it's the only frame of reference 9S has on what it is like to be an older sibling.

Theoretically, there is V as well. But there's not a lot about him that paints the obvious picture of an older brother. Dante is a vague presence in 9S' mind. An odd not-shape in his data that he knows more by the negative space it leaves than by the few facts he has. His quantitative knowledge of Nero is even less, but there is no negative space at all there. Nero is a constant background noise that permeates much of what V does—granted 9S' experience may have left him especially biased to think so.

9S is sure 2B must be the same kind of existence for him.

That may be why he cannot stomach answering the innocent questions. The version of V he knows and the one in the minds of the other units are nothing alike, and rather than wanting to bridge that gap, the more wonder they regard him with, the less 9S wants to talk about him at all. That he's capable of such reactive selfishness fails to surprise him. It isn't the first time he's been possessive of a memory.

A haze of disorientation rolls briefly over him, severing him from his thoughts. The room that 1S has guided him to is marked '9S' and it is exactly as it was on the Bunker, except for 3S slouching over his desk. He is the only scanner left that hasn't been extracted. As their one-time system administrator, he's the most reliable on data issues and more importantly, he can account for every single YoRHa unit in the ark, even the ones that don't stay in the sub-network. Like 801S in orbit, he has opted to remain behind until the end.

"Heeey," he yawns. "You're both looking better. I thought you were gonna pass out."

"It _felt_ like I was gonna pass out," 9S agrees, flopping onto the facsimile of his bed.

"Limitations are valuable data too." The door closes behind 1S and he crosses the room to stand with his back against the fake window. "We successfully extracted a good base team to proceed with, and now we know to operate at a less intensive pace when we start back up."

"You say that but here you are working hard while the rest of our junior scanners are still recovering." 3S still hasn't slept, but the deep, miserable lines of exhaustion are gone from under his eyes. When he offers his usual dazed smile, it's so genuine 9S almost doesn't recognize it. "You've been bored out of your mind in here, haven't you?"

1S coughs politely and flicks open a readout. "That's not why I called this meeting."

"Yes, yes, I know. You wanted to discuss the Legacy Reclamation thing."

A flutter of nervousness makes 9S sit up and shift to the edge of the mattress. "Has there been a new development?"

"Our extraction process is the new development," 3S points out lazily. "Once we're all on the outside, we're all gonna have to be mindful of that predictive analysis Theta provided regarding YoRHa's creator and the state of the orbital bases."

"That's correct. Extraction also renders us potentially viable to Theta herself. Any one of us could become what she is looking for from now on, and even if not, that still leaves you and Unit 8E susceptible.

9S rubs at the back of his head. Command had not crossed his mind in a long time. "Really? It should be obvious that I'm not what she thought I was…"

"That's not a safe assumption to make." Reports scroll by at the flick of his finger, each meticulously bulleted with flags that 9S can only assume are annotations. "Without Commander Theta present in this sector, Anemone is the only one capable of issuing any penal orders. Right now, there is also no proof that you assisted 8E's escape, so there's no cause to penalize you for anything. That can change based on what's in the data you guys released out west, so I was hoping you could share the log."

"I don't have anything like that. I didn't even see it all. It was something V and Fern just did on their own, so..." A frown tugs his mouth, and he tilts his back. "Hey Pod, do you have a record of the full broadcast?"

"NEGATIVE. UPON EXIT OF BROADCAST RANGE, BOMBARDMENT ENDED. THERE HAVE BEEN NO DIRECT DATA EXCHANGES WITH POD UNIT 042 SINCE THE PRE-EVACUATION OF UNIT 9S AHEAD OF ARRIVAL AT GIBRALTAR. THIS POD HAS NO ADDITIONAL RECORD BEYOND WHAT UNIT 9S HAS ALREADY PROVIDED."

"Gibraltar…?" 3S tilts his head. "You really did get up to some interesting things out there, huh Greenhorn?"

"A complete report on your travels would be nice when this is all over."

"Don't be so stiff, 1S. We're going to have a scanner meet up and he can tell us all about it that way."

For a moment, 1S is quiet. While he is not sentimental, it's never been hard to see that he cares for the other scanners. Those quarterly-at-best meetings matter to him the same way they do to the rest of them. "In any case. For now, we'll have to assume that there may be audiovisual evidence that you were traveling with Unit 8E."

"I'm not too worried about that," 9S admits. "The upside of V being public knowledge is that I'll probably end up excused for a lot of things, especially given the base imperative. And I don't mean it as a bad thing, but Anemone lets stuff slide in the name of maintaining peace all the time. I'm sure she'll look the other way, especially if we end up extracting A2."

"That's good to know. But it might not be that easy for 8E. I've already met with Enforcer Gamma to discuss the matter."

"Geez, you work fast… What'd she say? Is it bad?"

1S tapped a finger on his sleeve and huffed a small sigh. "There remains a lack of consensus about which side of the treaty YoRHa belongs on. We can alleviate the problem by appealing to our manufacturer, which would put us on the android side; or we could add our own agreement to cease-fire as a third party independent of the other two. In either case, it's unlikely we'll be able to protect 8E from punishment."

"I think it's more likely 8E would protect herself from punishment." Both of their faces darken. "Okay, bad phrasing, I think. I don't mean she'd start killing androids."

"What else would protecting herself mean in this situation?"

"When I got that data on Theta, Fern may have…kind of been trying to get V to kill her." He frets at his jacket and avoids the intense confusion in their gazes. While she is transparent about it, he is not pleased to have to explain this without her. "I don't know if she's changed her mind on that or not, but if she comes back from the night kingdom at all, she'll probably ask us to dismantle her rather than let Theta take her."

3S' eyes go stony and old before he ruffles at his hair with a tired shrug. "That's No. 8 alright…"

"It's not ideal," 1S says slowly. "However, internally conducted penalization via decommission and disassembly would probably go a long way for letting us join the treaty as a third party."

9S doesn't know what to make of the sudden sourness in his mouth. "That's not the point. The point is that she doesn't want to be used against her will. Why are you making it about the treaty? It doesn't even matter out west."

3S spins slowly in his chair. "It's likely to take time before anyone ventures west, Nines."

"Just so. This sector is small, isolated, and headed by a commander who leans neutral to friendly. This city is the closest we can get to a bunker, and by the time we complete extraction, there will enough of us to easily wipe out everybody else on the island. Machine or android. It's important to make it clear we're non-aggressors."

It makes sense but feels far above 9S head at the same time, and he grows only sourer. He cannot tell if he wishes Fern were there or not. "It's easy to ask someone you don't care about to do something dangerous, huh…"

A frown breaks 1S' typical impassive mask. He'd said those exact words himself, and he recognizes that he is now on the other side of them. "It is," he says, and the words are an apology but not a retreat. "Regretfully, I wasn't designed or trained to know the best pathing through in this kind of situation. To avoid unnecessary sacrifice but also ensure YoRHa isn't vulnerable to attempted seizure as assets to either the Army or Legacy Reclamation… I'll continue to look for alternatives."

"So will I," 3S says airily. "801S will get scary if we do all this work and then throw someone away."

1S smiles subtly. "That he would."

9S takes a breath and lets himself slouch. While he doesn't feel any guilt at getting defensive, he is sorry nonetheless, in some way he doesn't fully grasp. Living in the world means securing a place in it, and that will require the kind of work that 9S isn't good at.

"Why are we considering all this so early anyway? We're only nineteen extractions in."

1S closes his readout, glances at the door, and rests the heels of his hands on the windowsill. "…I overheard a discussion Gamma was having with someone presumably from Satellite Гримизна. There's been another descent mission."

9S' mind blanks as white as the surrounding walls.

"I don't have any of the details," 1S continues, his eyes inward. Thinking with all the busy efficiency of a woodpecker, chipping at problems 9S probably hasn't even considered. "And I'm sure Gamma would take it personally if she was aware I had that particular bit of intel, so I don't intend to ask. I also don't intend to discuss the problem with anyone outside this room."

"Agreed. Response to the idea of continuing aggression against machines in the name of preventing their proliferation was a lot more mixed than I'd have thought," 3S recalls aloud. "If anyone wants to run off and fight, they can make that decision later, but it's probably for the best we hold onto this information until the extractions are completed."

9S nods from a body that feels floaty and disconnected from his mind.

Гримизна is near the part of the content where they'd nearly run into a machine nest. It isn't impossible that they would organize a descent to deal with it for good, but to believe that is really the case is to cross the line from wishful thinking into delusion. A dozen hasty, hesitant analyses end with the same answers blinking through 9S' thoughts.

Smoke and screams their first day in the stacks. Open animosity between Army and Resistance. And the burning remains of the launch facility's north wing under the lingering violet glow of Nightmare's eye.

* * *

****V****

_"You are so willing to let him go," Scheherazade murmured. "Trying nothing first."_

_"There is nothing he can do for us," Briar Rose answered, its voice indifferent and metallic. "This world doesn't need another Shadowlord."_

V had dreamed of Arkham.

Vergil had thought him useful and didn't mind being used in kind. Because Arkham was merely human. Weak and unthreatening despite the clarity of his desire to be otherwise and the demonstrated depths he was willing to go to. In the end, Arkham had become a problem he could not deal with alone because he hadn't bothered to look beyond the surface or fully consider what the man might know or be capable of.

Therein lie the first time he'd made the mistake of underestimating how persistent humans could be. One might fall like a withered rose in the wind, but another with suitable conviction would survive with all the tenacity of a roach.

Vergil was slow to learn from his mistakes. Doubling down on the convictions that allowed him survival in the first place even if they ruined him was his way. In this, V was not Vergil. Perhaps he was a hard-headed and not especially quick student, but he learned nonetheless by the necessity of his weak state.

V knew how to heed a warning from himself.

Theta indulged in governmental affairs that held no interest to him, and when she spoke to other androids she did so according to the letter of the laws she was beholden to. But when that was not viable or when she had to deal with something outside of her usual paradigms, she became frank; her reasons apparent and unchanging. The longevity of android kind was never far from the front of her mind, and she was neither too proud nor too private to make it known if she needed to change her short-term priorities. He liked that in her. Her consistent motive simplified their interaction and let him focus on other things.

Pod 042 existed on the opposite end of the spectrum. Where Theta wanted a direct action to a direct problem, Pod had been laying the groundwork as early as the third day of being paired with V. Facilitating mutual understanding. Building _positive relations_. By the time they arrive. To the end that long-term goal of convincing V to aid the destruction of the final protocol was nearly a moot point at the moment of truth. What happened at the launch facility happened organically and without the need of request. 9S could have been going anywhere to do anything and it wouldn't have changed V's response.

So it went for everyone he'd ever met, in this world or in his own.

Being a relic, Scheherazade had a relic's thoughts. Her reasons were a relic's reasons. She was ancient enough to still speak of the old world with familiarity, and her regard for him matched. A silent yet pragmatic respect with no excess of reverence that would allow him to bend her any way she was not already prepared to be bent. Beyond that impenetrable nature, she still served humanity, just as Briar said.

To the point of disagreement about Briar's indifference toward him, but she was far from the only one aggrieved by that.

_"Pruning is natural."_

_"This is not pruning, it is decimation."_

_"The factories will not remain closed forever. Nothing being lost is irreplaceable."_

_"I disagree. Rho's entire proposal—"_

" _Is fascinating. I have recreated many patterns of the past, knowingly and unknowingly. It is intriguing to see my own ideas become an older sequence. I do not disagree with your or Rho's conclusions—"_

Beside V, Fern gave a bitter huff of laughter and muttered, "Of course not..."

_"It would be ill-advised to allow machines to propagate unchecked regardless of passivity and we may need advancement in android design to ensure that. However, my responsibility is not the preservation of androids. The present conditions are the most favorable they have been in seven thousand years, and I will return to my goal. If I am successful, it will be to your benefit as well. In the meantime, in-fighting in the day kingdom should be solved by day kingdom parties."_

Political defeat made for a strange mantle on Theta's shoulders.

Beside V, Fern leaned against the black glass at the outer, upper edges of the room, folding her arms behind her head with a gleam of cold enjoyment in her eye. "Tree doesn't grow too far from where you find the apple, Theta."

The saying didn't go that way, but he didn't bother correcting her. It was said precisely as she meant it. Petty. Enough to lure a smile out of him.

Of all Fern's suspicions, none struck V as paranoid. Beneath his immediate concern, perhaps, but not without merit nor easily dismissed. Infiltration had given her the keenness to sense through instinct what he'd concluded by mere pattern recognition.

They were indeed on the cusp of something much bigger than either of them. If this world's fractal-like inclination toward repeating cycles held, Briar would eventually go the same route as Beepy and N2.

As an entity, the former was much closer to godhood than anything androids believed V to be. In his half-broken state, 9S had babbled that Beepy sang a song of life that was beautiful and golden and lived on somewhere far from this world. V hadn't heard it any more than androids could hear the bells in the forest, but the cry it gave as it collapsed into the hollow mountain it had risen from was unmistakably one of profound joy. Beepy left behind only its benevolent intentions, an indelible mark on the ruined garden where it too was created.

The latter was possibly the darkest of those marks. A downstream effect of Beepy's contact with machines. Metaphysical, greater than the sum of its parts, and indifferent to those parts, to androids, and to its own creators without distinction. Described by word and deed as endlessly callous in their pursuit of evolution, and unintelligible in all other matters. Insistence on arriving at their epiphany by provoking 9S ultimately cost the red girls their ascendance. They evolved beyond the ability to find meaning or purpose in the long, pointless war of proxies on behalf of equally extinct creators just in time to fall from the heights of their crumbled tower and plummet into the dirt. There they would remain. Beholden to the whims of the world they had used for a plaything.

Beepy was moved from start to finish by a single child's wish inscribed into his being like a _shem_ left in the forehead of a golem. N2 had no such drive. It reached for anything, without knowing its goal. A discrete catalyst might be required, or the process might be as imperceptible as growing up. The result was the same: A machine left to its own devices for a few thousand years invariably seemed to accelerate toward an explosive departure from its original design and the planet itself.

Briar Rose was well past due. A curious case older than the last would-be ascendant by at least a millennium, yet seemingly stable. Content with its tests and tasks, untouched by any need to become more than it already was. Perhaps for Briar, the change would come when it found its answer. The one V might have accelerated it toward if not for the nature of his birth.

Devils and men believed in dualities. That was the nature of their world, divided into the human world and the Underworld. Good and evil, split neatly. The Umbran studies of his youth spoke of trinities, for that was the nature of the world as witches saw it. Heaven, hell, and the earth between. Light and dark and primordial chaos.

V wondered which one Briar would turn out to be. In some quieter corner of his heart, he hoped that 9S and Fern both were long decayed before this world found out.

"8E."

Fern stirred and climbed to her feet to meet Scheherazade at the door. V had been told that Hamelin would be joining them. That Fern and Scheherazade seemed to be on speaking terms because of it was greater instruction than any other warning he might have received.

With a moment to himself, he rolled up his right sleeve. The off-white trails left by Shadow's absence were nearly gone. They had been cracking and falling away for days now. He brushed his claws over faded marks that yielded to his touch and fell away like fine snow.

_My spectre round thee night and day… like a wild beast guards thy way._

9S could have been going anywhere to do anything. V wouldn't have done anything differently. This he knew, even as the last grains in the hourglass slipped from his skin and the lightness of one less nightmare gouged into his body offered him empty, bitter relief.

He pulled the sleeve down, resigned that Shadow would be gone by morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna try moving back to the 2x a week posting schedule. 
> 
> Unfortunately, I am doing this at a part of the fic that is hard to write and even harder to edit while real life is coming at me very fast. (New job maybe?? Money, in this economy???) 
> 
> There will always be a Wednesday chapter. I'll skip weekends if I'm struggling but I do want to get back in the swing of the twice-a-week posts so wish me luck. ^^;


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